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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS 
OF JESUS 



A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SOURCES 

OF THE GOSPELS, TOGETHER WITH A 

STUDY OF THE SAYINGS OF JESUS 



ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS 









'or w»s* H V 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



r 



NEW YORK LONDON 

27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 

&|re Knickerbocker |)ress 
1894 



N- 



*1 



Copyright, 1894 

BY 

ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
By G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 




Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by 

Ube Ikmcfcevbocfeer press, flew JJorfc 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 



TO 

MY FATHER AND MOTHER 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 

PART I.— THE SOURCES. 

CHAPTER 

I. — The Synoptic Gospels . 
II. — The Fourth Gospel 
III. — The Credibility of the Gospels 



PAGE 

I 



22 

6 7 

137 



PART II. — THE LIFE AND TEA CHINGS OF JESUS. 



I. — The Preparation .... 

II. — The Kingdom of Heaven 
III. — The Messiahship of Jesus . 
IV. — Jesus' Attitude towards the Law 

V. — Jesus' Doctrine of God and Man 
VI. — The Future of the Kingdom 



187 
210 
229 
242 

259 

278 



VI 



Contents. 



CHAPTER 

VII. — Thk Gaulean Ministry . 

VIII.— The Last Days of Jksus . 

IX. — Thk Resurrection of Jesus 

Appendix 

Index to Passages in the Gospels 



PAGE 
297 

312 

326 

337 
35i 




THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS 
OF JESUS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE discussions about religion which we have been 
familiar with in recent years have had one thing 
about them which, if it is not new, is at any 
rate sufficiently striking to deserve that a particular 
emphasis should be put upon it, and that is the way 
in which the discussion has been taken out of the 
hands of a small circle of professed champions, and has 
become a topic of public interest, familiar even to readers 
of magazines and newspapers. This perhaps has not 
been without its disadvantages, for the controversies 
have not always been marked by soberness or by very 
great wisdom ; and yet one hardly can regret a fact 
which shows what a hold religion has over the minds 
of men, and in how real a manner they are concerned 
about it. But whatever we may think about the fact, 
it has shown in a very unmistakable way, what religious 
teachers are still sometimes disposed to ignore, that 
there are a very great number of persons who are no 
longer content to take their religious creeds upon 



2 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

authority, but who are demanding a reason for what 
they have been taught, and who want a faith which 
shall harmonize with what in other ways they are 
beginning to learn about the universe. 

And also, to one who is willing to recognize the 
facts, popular Christianity, the forms of Christianity 
which our churches and our religious newspapers pre- 
dominatingly represent, has so far failed to satisfy this 
demand, and it does not seem likely that it will be able 
to satisfy it. The Church has insisted upon it that it 
had a religion which was perfect, a religion where no 
changes could be allowed ; and it therefore cannot be 
surprised if other things have been changing and have 
left it behind. For that it has been left behind, that 
no longer it is in sympathy with what is most charac- 
teristic in modern ways of thinking, is the plainest of 
facts, whether or not we may regret that this is so. 
The break between science and religion we long ago 
were told of, aggressively enough on both sides ; and 
every day it seems to be growing harder for men to 
read and think, and still to hold to beliefs which a 
hundred years ago men found little difficulty in hold- 
ing to. Popular religion, it is true, in its more out- 
spoken representatives, has its own explanation for 
this, an explanation not nattering to science and 
culture ; but explainable or not, for all eyes the fact is 
there, and it is not well for any one to pass too lightly 
by it. For while truth of course may be doubted, and 
for all that may be none the less true, yet we must not 
forget that the proper business of truth is to approve 
itself to us, to satisfy us ; and whatever steadily and 
inevitably gives rise to doubt, to doubt which is the 
greater as knowledge becomes greater, and which 
often men cannot get rid of unless they refuse to think 



Introduction. 



at all, we may hesitate fairly to receive as truth. 
Christianity has claimed it as a chief excellence, that 
through its means religion is no longer esoteric, the 
possession of philosophers, but is brought home to all 
men, that one who does not have the training of the 
schools still may enjoy the benefits which it confers ; 
and it has done quite right to insist upon this. But 
when religion becomes, not something where the wise 
man and the ignorant stand upon terms which are 
fairly equal, but where the wise man is at a disadvan- 
tage, something which is less easily to be accepted by 
the thinker than by the one who cannot or who will 
not think at all, then the mistake is just as fatal as the 
old mistake of making salvation depend upon phi- 
losophy, and such a religion cannot long continue. 

To religion itself, fortunately, there seems to be but 
little danger. Religion, of some sort or other, there 
appears no likelihood that men will be content to do 
without, if it be nothing more than M. Renan' splaying 
at religion . But whether this is likely to be the Christian 
religion, the religion of the Bible, there is more reason 
perhaps to be in doubt. Certainly, those who tell us 
that the Christian religion must now be set aside are 
fairly numerous, and they are not lacking at all in 
positiveness ; if they only might agree better as to what 
is to take its place, we should listen to them, perhaps, 
more hopefully. For myself, I confess I do not believe 
that the religion of the Bible is yet to be put aside ; 
rather does it seem to me that more and more men are 
likely to come back to it, and to rest upon it. For, 
for one thing, however skilfully our new religions have 
been framed and adapted to meet the needs of a univer- 
sal religion, a religion of mankind, mankind in general 
has steadily refused to see their superiority, and has 



4 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

found them exceedingly comfortless and unsatisfying. 
This the author of the religion no doubt finds explicable 
enough. To know truth, he will say, requires a cer- 
tain amount of preparation, of culture, and most of all 
it requires a clear vision and a freedom from prejudice ; 
and these qualifications the mass of men do not possess, 
notoriously they are under the control of priest-craft 
and of superstition. But after all the matter is not to 
be so easily explained. That Christianity for some 
eighteen hundred years now has had the power to 
arouse a boundless love in multitudes of men, shows 
very plainly that a real truth, and a very essential 
truth, does indeed lie wrapped up in it. Superstition, 
mistaken enthusiasm, does not act in this way, it does 
not hold men as Christianity holds them, it does not 
work upon them as Christianity has done to make them 
in a surprising way purer and better men, a test which 
is, after all, not the worst one that could be applied. 
That the Christian religion, too, has succeeded best in 
bringing joy to men, in bringing them peace and satis- 
faction, this also is not to be lightly thought of. Now 
just in this lies the one evidence for the Christian reli- 
gion which cannot be shaken, the evidence that rests 
upon experience. That men have been made better, 
and the needs which they feel to be their deepest needs 
have been satisfied, that somehow or other this has 
come to them through the Bible, however we may ex- 
plain this we cannot explain it away. But upon this 
fact men have not been content to rest ; they have made 
the explanation of it more important than the fact itself, 
and they have even made the fact depend upon the ex- 
planation. The Christian, on his side, has his creed, 
his elaborate theory of the Bible, and upon the cer- 
tainty of this theory he hotly maintains that the cer- 



Introduction. 



tainty of his experience must depend. The unbeliever 
is quite ready to meet him half way, and he demon- 
strates eagerly that the theory is all wrong, and so the 
experience ought not to exist at all. But then the ex- 
perience does exist, it stands as a fact ; and to show 
that any number of explanations may be questionable 
explanations does not change the fact in the slightest. 
This then is the important thing about the Bible, the 
benefit which actually it may be the means of bringing 
to us. To criticise the Bible, to find out when and 
how it was written, and what is the truth about the 
matters of history which it deals with, however im- 
portant this may be, is still a matter of secondary 
importance ; and when criticism stops at this, and 
thinks that by explaining this it has explained every- 
thing, it is of very little importance indeed. So far as 
religion is concerned, one might even prefer to have 
nothing to do with criticism at all, to let questions of 
date and authorship look after themselves ; but to 
many people this is no longer possible, and that it is 
no longer possible the Church has itself largely to 
blame. The Church has not been content to insist 
upon the many things in the Bible which are undeni- 
ably true and beautiful, but it must needs surround 
the Bible with a rigid theory about it, it must warn 
people to accept the whole Bible without demur, as 
the Church accepted it, or else to let the Bible quite 
alone. To show that these theories cannot be true, to 
show that this or that belief about the Bible can no 
longer be accepted, is not the highest work or the 
most important, but this is the first thing that has to 
be done. Such work is destructive, and one could 
wish it did not need doing at all ; done at its best it 
dissatisfies us somewhat. Such a work was that of 



6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Strauss in his famous Life of Jesus, a book almost to be 
regretted, in spite of all its great merits. But, neverthe- 
less, it is one of the objects of this work to show that, 
after all that an unsparing criticism can say, the re- 
ligious value of the Bible still remains, and that it 
speaks to the present generation with a power which, 
under the old conceptions, it could never hope to have. 
As for the results in Bible criticism which so far 
have been established by scholars, especially by the 
German scholars, I am not disposed to make too 
sweeping claims. But one thing at any rate criticism 
has established, for which, with all its failures, we 
should be very grateful to it, and that is the claim of 
the writings which make up the Bible to be treated as 
literature, as historical documents. Very much of our 
English and American criticism has failed to have any 
influence, and must of necessity fail, because it is not 
willing to recognize this fact ; it is a criticism which is 
still busying itself about theories of verbal inspiration, 
and which still hopes that it may be able to remove all 
inconsistencies from the Bible. No one who under- 
stands the spirit of these endeavors will have any de- 
sire to ridicule them ; but we must insist that they are 
hopeless, and, besides being hopeless, that they are do- 
ing a great deal to destroy the credit of the Bible itself. 
Such conceptions as these it will not be possible for me 
to argue against in detail ; to this end Mr. Ingersoll 
has been raised up, and Mr. Ingersoll we may safely 
leave with those who are interested in his writings, to 
settle matters among themselves. Nor is argument, 
however clear and logical it may be, likely to have 
very much influence in convincing any one, for of argu- 
ment there never has been any lack. So long as men 
look at the Bible as a book direct from heaven, no 



Introduction. 



evidence that can be brought forward on the other 
side will ever be strong enough to outweigh its testi- 
mony. But we are coming to see that it is not possible 
to look upon the Bible as a book direct from heaven, 
we are finding out that the Bible is only one sacred 
book among many, and that it is not the Christian 
only who has his doctrine of infallibility. And if 
those to whom the narratives of the Bible are so sacred 
that they are not to be handled freely as other narra- 
tives are handled, could for just one moment stand 
aside from their own point of view, and could realize 
that criticism, if it is honest criticism, must begin by 
looking upon the Bible just as they themselves look 
upon other sacred books, as something to be tested 
just as other books are tested, at least some of the 
bitterness of controversy would be done away. 

There is the more need to speak plainly and sharply 
in this matter, because many of our religious leaders 
are disposed to admit the principle, while they are not 
willing to apply it. The Bible, they say, may contain 
errors. But that any particular statement is an error, 
they will not admit so long as there is any way, prob- 
able or improbable, in which it may be explained. 
Now this is not consistent, and it is not quite honest ; 
it is pretending to treat the Bible in an impartial way, 
without treating it in a way that is actually impartial. 
When we are dealing with any other book we do not 
assume that its statements are true so long as there is 
any conceivable way in which they might be true ; we 
balance the evidence, and then we decide for the more 
probable view. And we must insist that the state- 
ments of the Bible are to be accepted or rejected on 
just the same degree of probability or improbability 
which would govern us anywhere else. 



8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

We have had no lack of discussion in recent years 
as to just what inspiration is, and how much ground it 
covers. Such discussions, one cannot help thinking, 
are to no very great profit. One who holds that the 
Bible is wholly without error is at the least consistent ; 
but if we admit but one error, however slight that error 
may be, we really have no right to stop half way. For 
if error is possible* then any particular statement may 
be in error, and there is nothing left for it but to test 
each statement upon its own merits. No more have 
we the right, while we hand over the history to criti- 
cism, to retain our claim of infallibility for the religious 
teaching. For, apart from the fact that we very often 
cannot separate the two, it is just in the religious 
teaching that we meet with some of the greatest diffi- 
culties. L,et us take such a story as that which is 
given in the twenty-first chapter of Second Samuel : 
Jehovah sends a famine upon the land because, some 
years before, Saul had slain the Gibeonites ; the seven 
sons of Saul are put to death, and Jehovah is appeased. 
Let us apply our test to it ; what should we have said 
if we had met with this story in any other book ? With- 
out hesitation we should have said that it was barbar- 
ous and superstitious, a wholly unworthy notion of 
God. Then with no less hesitation let us say the same 
thing when it is in the Bible that we find it. So, too, 
in the New Testament we find the whole Church be- 
lieving in a second coming of Christ, which should 
take place within a few years. This is a belief which 
is distinctly a religious belief, and yet for all that it was 
a mistaken belief, and we have to admit that it was 
mistaken. 

If then we will make up our minds that God has not 
seen fit to give men a book which will save them the 



Introduction. 



trouble of doing their religious thinking for themselves, 
we shall find that we have left a theory of inspiration, 
which may not settle all our questions in so short and 
easy a fashion, but which at least has the advantage 
that it is something which can be verified. None of 
us, if we had lived in the days of Isaiah or of Paul, 
would, it is likely, have been willing to submit to Isaiah 
or to Paul, as to infallible guides, who could make no 
mistake in their teaching, any more than, in our own 
day, we should have been willing to submit to Mr. 
Arnold or Mr. Spurgeon. And the mere use of pen 
and ink surely gives no stamp of infallibility to any 
man's beliefs. But any one of us might have been 
glad to recognize in Isaiah or in Paul a man to whom 
had been granted a new insight into religious truth, 
truth which we accepted, not because it came from 
Isaiah or from Paul, but because it bore in itself the 
testimony to its own truthfulness. And in the Bible 
this is just what we have, we have the words, coming 
to us directly or through other men, of those who have 
been the world's greatest religious teachers ; only here 
we do not have them by word of mouth, but in the 
form of literature, of many different books. These 
books were called forth just as sermons and essays and 
histories are called forth now. In the same way they 
represent the convictions of the authors. But for just 
the reason that we do not believe there have lived in 
the world some thirty-five or forty men whose opinions 
on history and science and religion have been infallibly 
true, for just this reason we do not believe the books 
they have written are infallibly true. Just what is true 
and what is not true we have to determine exactly as 
we should determine it in the books of Mr. Arnold and 
Mr. Spurgeon. The statements of history and of 



IO The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

science we have to judge by the rules which govern 
historical and scientific criticism ; the religious truths 
we must judge by their own inherent reasonableness. 

And coming to the Bible in this way, treating it as 
we should treat any other book, it will not escape us 
that it is just in the matter of the miraculous that the 
case for the Bible is the weakest. For in other books 
it is precisely this supernatural element which we treat 
with the least hesitation ; when we meet with miracles 
we do not ask any one to prove to us that they are not 
true, we simply assume that they are not true. We 
may ask what foundation lies at the bottom of them, 
but even when there is no such foundation that we can 
come at, we are none the less sure that it is only with 
natural events that we have to do. 

Now that this method men should hesitate to apply 
rigorously when they come to the Bible miracles, to 
the Gospel miracles most of all, one may not find very 
surprising. For the Gospel miracles there are many 
things to be said which one cannot say for other mir- 
acles, and upon the Gospel miracles, too, vastly more 
depends. But still men have been far too eager to 
establish their importance, and they have made much 
to depend upon them which really does not depend 
upon them at all. For the divine character of the 
Christian religion may stand, quite apart from the 
question of any miracles that are connected with it, 
and one may quite consistently hold to the one while 
he lets the other go. A miracle, we may say, defined 
in simple terms, is something which the working of 
natural and every day laws could not bring about, 
which is not the result of an orderly extension and 
development of forces with which we are acquainted, 
but an interruption of this development, whose value 



Introduction. 1 1 



lies just in the fact that it is not permanent, not some- 
thing that we are used to, — putting aside philosophical 
refinements, this is what naturally we mean. Now so 
soon as one recognizes what a miracle is, he will see 
that to deny miracles is not at all to deny the presence 
of God, to deny the supernatural. Indeed one might 
fairly say to the arguer for miracles, When you insist 
upon the miraculous, you are neglecting the very thing 
which points most clearly to the supernatural. It is 
justin the fact of law, of orderly development, of the 
absence of what is simply disconnected and arbitrary, 
that men to-day are inclined to see the presence of God 
most clearly. The indications of a goal to which the 
universe is tending, and which was wrapped up in its 
very beginnings, the slow and steady progress from 
the simple to the complex along definite lines, the evi- 
dence of a purpose in the long stretch of material 
evolution and human history, this is where men now 
are looking to see God's hand at work. And it is 
because the Christian religion does not interrupt this 
development, but falls in naturally with it, because we 
see a religion slowly unfolding till it should be fit to 
become a world religion, because we see righteousness 
working itself out in an extraordinary nation and an 
extraordinary life, and then extending itself to raise 
the rest of the world to the same level, that we call 
that religion and that life divine. But you do not 
think that such proof is enough ; in law, it is true, you 
do find a revelation of God, and you insist upon it, but 
in his highest revelation you think that he has given 
up this proof and has gone over to the other side, that 
he revealed himself in law, and then he revealed him- 
self by breaking his law. And when you blame us, 
one might still go on to say, because in denying mir- 



12 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

acles we show a lack of faith in God, we might reply 
that this may be a matter of opinion. For to see a 
revelation of God in the Christian religion because it is 
reasonable, because it is worthy of God and in harmony 
with the other revelations that he has made, this also, 
we think, is faith after a sort, and perhaps as accept- 
able as a faith in miracles. For a miracle after all 
proves very little indeed, and strictly it has nothing to 
do at all with what is the real object of faith. A mir- 
acle only shows that the one who performs it has a 
certain power over physical things, and it does not 
prove in the least that his words are true, though 
naturally enough we are more ready to accept them as 
true. We might conceive certainly that God could not 
warrant his truth to us except by giving us a sample 
of what he can do, by showing us how powerful he is ; 
but it would be quite as worthy of God, we think, if 
the truth had in it the power to attest itself. Indeed 
the greatest weakness of your argument appears in 
what you yourselves admit. You will not treat fairly, 
you say to us, the evidence for miracles ; you assume to 
begin with that they are not true, you let your natural 
objection to them influence your judgment. To you 
this seems to be a serious fault, perhaps a moral fault, 
but to us what you say appears to overthrow your own 
position. That there is a natural objection to miracles 
which makes them not easily to be believed, that every 
day it is growing harder and harder to believe them, 
and that they cannot be received except on the firmest 
and surest evidence, you yourselves will be ready to 
admit. But miracles are only valuable for the proof 
they furnish ; in themselves they have for the most 
part no value at all. So that 3^ou are insisting that the 
Christian religion is to be proved by the very things 



Introdtution. 1 3 



which themselves are most in need of proof ; you tell 
us that the proof of God rests upon the miraculous, and 
then you blame us because we have not faith enough 
in God to believe the miracles. It does not seem to us 
that for God to place men in a world where, after they 
came to know it, a distrust of miracles would become 
inevitable, and then to base the proof of his revelation 
to them upon this very thing, would be either fair or 
likely ; and the fact that we find it natural to suspect 
the miraculous, shows, we think, that miracles do not 
happen. 

For most people, doubtless, there will still be reasons 
which will keep them wholly from giving the miracles 
up, and most of all they will fear that they are detract- 
ing from the greatness of Jesus himself. The fear is a 
natural one, and it is not lightly to be disregarded ; 
but seriously we may ask ourselves whether the honor 
we have paid to Jesus has not been of a very doubtful 
sort after all, whether it has not been more a seeming 
honor than a real one. In our theologies, no doubt, 
and in our creeds, we have made much of him, but it 
has been the glory of a doctrine rather than the glory 
of a person, and of the real Jesus we have had far too 
little. And to the real Jesus we now must come, for 
the world no longer can content itself with a mock- 
man ; full and true humanity it must have first of all. 
How are men who must walk by faith to be helped by 
one who walked by sight, men who must fight their 
way through doubts and perplexities, by one who 
remembers a former life in heaven, who is omniscient 
and all-powerful ? Such a view as this does not honor 
Jesus, but by making easy and necessary for him what 
for other men is hard, it makes it impossible that he 
should attain that which is a man's highest achieve- 



14 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

ment, it takes away from him the blessedness of those 
who have not seen and yet have believed. The truth 
is, that if Jesus is to hold his old position, he must 
needs be rid first of the incubus of the sensuous and 
magical conceptions of religion with which he has been 
weighted. For these beliefs the foundations are rapidly 
crumbling away, and not even the authority of Jesus 
can hold them up much longer. Now, no one who 
has once submitted to the charm of Jesus' influence and 
has felt the immense power of his personality, can for 
a moment doubt that his position will be vindicated in 
the end ; nevertheless it is not so easy to give the proofs 
for one's faith, and to show just how the growth of 
legend which has gathered about the real Jesus and 
obscured his features is to be stripped away. It is this 
that I have made the attempt to do. I have not tried 
at all to treat questions of scholarship, except those 
necessary for my purpose, in an exhaustive way, nor 
to give a picture of the times in which Jesus lived. 
This already has been done much better than I could 
do it. Nor have I had any special desire to make a 
vivid narrative out of hazardous conjectures. What I 
have had in mind particularly to do was to bring the 
results of a careful criticism of the Gospels to bear upon 
the words attributed to Jesus, and to bring together 
into a consistent picture whatever the test may have 
left untouched. The beauty and the grandeur of this 
picture as it exists in my own mind I fear I have not 
been able to reproduce, but at least I trust I have re- 
moved some of the hindrances to each man's seeing 
that beauty for himself. 

I know that there are many to whom this book, if 
they ever happen to read it, will seem to be only an 
attack on what they hold as sacred. I shall be sorry 



Introduction, 1 5 



if this is so, but I do not see how it can well be helped. 
I have tried to let the facts make their own impression 
upon me, and I can do no better than to tell frankly 
what that impression is. And in the end I feel sure this 
will prove the truest method. Enough compromise in 
religious matters we have had already. If the scalpel 
does not go deep enough, the pain has been of no avail 
and the operation might as well never have been per- 
formed. I cannot feel surprised, however, that men 
should want to keep their own beliefs, and should not 
like to see them treated too roughly ; and I believe that 
the spirit which prompts this deserves all consideration. 
Our liberal writers of late years have made us tolerably 
familiar with the idea, no doubt startling enough in its 
time, that belief, after all, is not of very much account 
in religion, and that we may be satisfied if we can 
acquit ourselves fairly in the matter of conduct. Why, 
they are accustomed to say, should we trouble ourselves 
about creeds and articles of faith ? I*et us stop preach- 
ing doctrines, and let us go to preaching practical 
duties ; it makes but little difference what a man be- 
lieves so long as his life is right. Our knowledge at 
the best is fragmentary and uncertain ; let us recog- 
nize this, and let us not try to force it upon other men 
besides. And up to a certain point at least, as a pro- 
test against dogmatism, this idea is true and admirable 
enough. Certainly we ought not to lose sight of our 
own fallibility ; humility is an intellectual virtue which 
might with profit be cultivated more carefully, even 
among liberal thinkers. Still one cannot help feeling 
that creeds have been dismissed in somewhat too con- 
temptuous a way ; one hardly likes to treat his beliefs 
in so cavalier a fashion. It is true, no doubt, that my 
conceptions of truth are far from being perfect ; but 



1 6 The Life and Teachings of Jestts. 

then they are all I have, and I cannot be wholly indif- 
ferent to them. One must protest against making 
tolerance simply indifference about one's beliefs ; what- 
ever it may be or may not be, it surely is not this. The 
conviction that the truth which I see, others will come 
to see besides, the desire that this should be so, surely 
this is not something that one could wish to see driven 
out of the world. It goes hard if one may not be sure 
that the truth will conquer in the end ; and, with all 
readiness to be corrected, what can I know of truth be- 
yond what seems true to me, my. belief and creed ? This 
at least is what the most of us act upon, nor do I know 
that it is much worse to anathematize my neighbor 
because he does not accept my creed, than it is to abuse 
him because he declines to do without a creed alto- 
gether. Tolerance, therefore, one may say again, 
whatever it may be, is not indifference about belief. It 
is not true that what a man believes makes no differ- 
ence with him ; it may possibly make a great differ- 
ence, and usually it does make a difference of some 
sort. If there is any such thing as truth at all, one 
certainly must wish for men to know it. 

And yet for all that, tolerance in religion is certainly 
a good thing, and one is rather concerned to know in 
how far tolerance and zeal may go together. We are 
often told that ours is a tolerant age. I do not know ; 
perhaps it is true. But one cannot help thinking that 
what tolerance the Church possesses, it has gained some- 
what at the expense of its logic. What right, indeed, 
has the Church to be tolerant ? If a man's salvation 
depends upon his accepting certain beliefs, can there 
be any freedom of thought which is not really license ? 
Questionings, doubts, these belong where truth is un- 
certain ; here it is only to be accepted, and every devi- 



Introduction. 1 7 



ation from it is dangerous. I do not think, however, 
that the Church has been wrong in growing more toler- 
ant in recent years ; on the contrary, it has been quite 
right in doing this, and the mistake lies wholly in its 
logic. The Church has not been wrong in making 
much of doctrines, but it has been fatally wrong in con- 
necting doctrines with salvation. If it had followed 
Jesus it never would have done this ; but Jesus' view 
unfortunately was too simple to satisfy the ingenuity 
of his followers, who were for having a philosophy, a 
theology, that should speak with authority : and 
whereas Jesus had thought of salvation as character, 
as the growth of a man into the divine life, the theo- 
logians came to look upon the other side of it ; they 
were anxious to escape from the punishment of their 
sins, and they called this salvation. And looking at 
salvation in this way, it was inevitable that they should 
make belief the starting-point for it ; it is only when we 
get back to Jesus' view that the matter of belief will 
adjust itself. No man at any definite time can say 
what his beliefs shall be. He only can seek out the 
evidence, and then let his beliefs shape themselves as 
they will ; how they shape themselves will depend upon 
very many things which are outside himself. But a 
man can always say that he will recognize what is 
honorable and just, that he will follow this as truly as 
he can, and model his life upon it ; and by doing this 
he is following the directions of Jesus, and the only 
directions which Jesus gave. This is not to say that 
belief is not a part of salvation, or that a man is all 
that he is capable of becoming, so long as what he be- 
lieves is not in harmony with reality. Not this at all ; 
but belief cannot be manufactured to order, and it is 
something which very often must come at the end 



1 8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

rather than at the beginning, which is not the cause of 
salvation, so much as it is the result of it. The Church, 
on the contrary, has wished to force a theology on 
every one from the outset ; it has not recognized that 
belief is a growth just as character is a growth, that 
the accepting of truth in such liberal quantities renders 
it impossible to assimilate it and make it a part of our- 
selves, that such an acceptance is not believing, but 
only saying that we believe. And the course which 
this has led to is so manifestly unwise that one would 
think even the Church might have seen its lack of 
wisdom. A young man is beginning to think for him- 
self, and he is overwhelmed by doubts and contradic- 
tions. What now shall the Church say to him ? shall 
it say, Hold fast to your belief in goodness, live up to 
all the faith that is in you ; and that you may do this 
the better, come in with us, and whether you can be- 
lieve in God and the future, or not, we will help you 
and sympathize with your difficulties, — this surely might 
have something in its favor. But no, it does nothing of 
the sort ; it says to him, We can have no fellowship with 
you. Go and have your struggle out by yourself, and 
then, if you find that you can agree with us, come back 
and we will let you in. 

It is just here that the fault lies in most of the dis- 
cussions we are having on the question of Church union; 
men are assuming all the while that the Church, in one 
way or another, must be founded upon belief. Some 
writers will have us settle upon the Bible as a basis of 
union, as if now all sects alike did not appeal to the 
Bible as their authority, and as if a common Bible 
could be of any avail without a common principle of 
interpretation. If we must wait till all Christians can 
agree upon a creed, I fear we shall have long to wait ; 



Introduction, 19 



so long as belief at all is held to be essential, men will 
not be inclined to limit the number of their beliefs, and 
the doctrine that has been strong enough to form a sect 
will not readily give way for the sake of unity. But 
upon one thing every Christian can unite. That the 
ideal of character which Jesus represents is the true 
ideal, that for the realization of this ideal in the in- 
dividual and in the nation the Church is founded, this 
surety is a real basis of union, quite as strong as any 
compromise about articles of faith. It is true that the 
Church as a whole will stand for more than this, and it 
will not need to minimize its doctrines ; but without 
doing this, it still can give to the doctrines their proper 
place. Similarity of belief still might determine a 
man's Church associations, and yet one may doubt 
whether even this is altogether for the best, whether 
the association of those who look at truth in different 
ways would not have its advantages. We have the 
example of our Unitarian friends, who, with a great 
deal that is excellent in their creeds, have gone off by 
themselves, — one cannot help thinking they have lost 
something in spiritual life. Such association may not 
indeed have been possible in the past, and it may not 
now in every case be possible. So long as any one rests 
his salvation upon his doctrines he cannot always be 
courteous, for it is a matter of life and death with him. 
But if once we can give up this idea of salvation, one 
hardly sees why we may not come to a discussion even 
of religious truth in a kindly spirit and a spirit of fel- 
lowship. This most of all is what we need. There on 
the one side is the liberal Christian, who will have it 
that Christianity consists to a considerable extent in 
not being Orthodox, who is much too ready to show 
his contempt of tradition, and who appears to think that 



20 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

his liberalism is a necessary proof of his intellectual 
superiority ; and there is the conservative Christian, 
who is inclined to suspect the motives of those who dis- 
agree with him, — each of these, it may be, might learn 
from the other, if only they could be brought together. 
The Church has come to a crisis in its history, and 
whether in the future it is to retain the influence which 
it has had in the past, will rest very largely with itself. 
I have confidence that it will not fail ; there are many 
indications which show that already it is beginning to 
realize that it has new opportunities and new duties, 
that it is working under conditions which are fast 
changing. The theologians who are willing to bring 
dogmas to the test of history, who are not afraid to look 
facts in the face, and, best of all, who are coming back 
more and more to Jesus, and trying to find out what he 
really stood for, are constantly becoming more numer- 
ous. But they still are far too few, and there is still 
very much that the Church will have to learn ; first of 
all it must learn that truth is sacred, and that in the 
search for truth dogma and tradition must be held at 
their proper value. It has talked glibly of Strauss and 
Wellhausen, of atheism and rationalism, let it now try to 
understand what it has been talking about, let it ask 
itself whether the opinions which it deplores could have 
had such influence, if they had been wholly wrong and 
the Church wholly right, let it be less concerned to dis- 
cover arguments for its own side than to discover truth. 
I do not complain that the Church refuses to accept new 
opinions, I complain only because it shows little incli- 
nation to be just to them, and because it is too ready to 
resort to the least convincing of all arguments, mis- 
representation and abuse. It is not well that the Church 
should change at once its old creeds ; it is not well that 



Introduction. 



those who are satisfied by the old forms of truth should 
be made to exchange them for new ones. But those 
who no longer find that the old forms satisfy their 
needs, who do not find them in harmony with the new 
light that has come from science and philosophy, these 
also have their rights, and it surely is well that these 
rights should be respected. 




PART I.— THE SOURCES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THK SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 

IF we are to obtain any secure results about the life 
of Jesus, it will be necessary first to make a careful 
examination of the sources which furnish the facts 
relating to that life, and in particular to find out on 
whose authority they come to us, and whether we have 
to fall back on the words of men who really had the 
means of knowing the truth about the matter. And 
this leads at once to the problem which of all the New 
Testament problems is perhaps the most perplexing, 
perplexing because the answer to it depends upon an 
immense number of separate points which themselves 
may be decided in altogether different ways, and 
which all of them must be kept in mind, and be placed 
side by side, in order to see the bearing which they 
have ; so that a special preparation one really needs, 
if the question is to be perfectly clear to him. And, 
indeed, a strict demonstration, one which shall do 
away with all ground for dispute, is hardly to be 
looked for. The best one can do in such a case is to 

23 



24 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

establish probabilities, and the result must be judged, 
not by its being demonstrably certain in any case, but 
by the number of cases to which it can be made to 
apply with naturalness. At any rate the solution 
must be attempted, for upon it, in a very large degree, 
one's conception of the Gospels will have to depend. 

What then is the problem that calls for solution? 
Stated very briefly it is this. Our first three Gospels, 
the Gospels which sometimes are known as the synop- 
tic Gospels, to distinguish them from the Gospel of 
John, are connected with one another in a very curious 
way, which commentators from early times have no- 
ticed, and have made more or less satisfactory attempts 
to explain. While each of the Gospels contains 
matter which is not to be found in either of the other 
two, yet there is general resemblance between them 
which is very decided. In all of them there is the 
same general order of events. There are long sections 
which correspond very largely word for word, and this 
verbal agreement, in a greater or less degree, extends 
to nearly all of the material which is common to two 
or more of the Gospels. But alongside of this re- 
semblance there are differences also, and the differences 
are just as decided as the resemblances are. Not a few 
narratives are placed in quite different connections 
by different Evangelists. The most of Jesus' sayings 
are assigned to two or more different occasions. It is 
very seldom that narratives are absolutely identical, 
one an exact copy of the other, and in the midst 
of verbal resemblances there often are strange differ- 
ences, which it has taken all the ingenuity of commen- 
tators to keep from the appearance of discrepancy. It 
is evident that we have here a complicated literary 
problem, which it will not be possible to solve without 



The Synoptic Gospels. 25 

going into a somewhat tedious and laborious com- 
parison of details ; but before doing this let us look 
at a few more general considerations, which will help 
to clear the ground. 

All explanations, it will be seen, would fall roughly 
into three classes. Either our Gospels are quite inde- 
pendent of one another, or they are not • and if they 
are not independent, then either they must have used 
a common source or sources, or they must, along with 
this perhaps, have made use also of one another. In 
our own country it is the first view which is by all 
means the most popular one, and it is not hard to see 
why this should be so. At first glance it might appear 
to be the most natural view, as certainly it is the 
simplest. Not very many men have either the time or 
the inclination for the somewhat complex critical pro- 
cesses which are necessary for understanding the basis 
on which either of the other theories rests, and perhaps 
it is true that the very different results which the Ger- 
man critics have reached are not calculated to impress 
one with the accuracy of the methods which they use. 
But, what also is an important reason, it is the view 
which almost of necessity follows certain theories of 
inspiration, the only one that can very well be held 
when criticism has chiefly to do with harmonizing. The 
manner in which this theory would seek to explain the 
connection between the three Gospels is briefly as fol- 
lows. The repetition of sayings and of incidents from 
the life of Jesus naturally would play an important 
part in the teaching of the Apostles; and in the 
poverty of the Aramaic dialect these would tend to 
become more or less stereotyped in form, and in course 
of time would grow into a considerable body of tradi- 
tion. For a while this oral teaching would be suffi- 



26 The Life a?id Teachings of Jesus. 

cient, but as the Church grew, and tradition came less 
to be relied on, a need would be felt for more authori- 
tative records ; and to meet this need, it is supposed 
that about the same time our three Gospels appeared. 
In this way it is sought to explain both the resem- 
blances and the differences, the former by the fact 
that all the narratives were drawn from a common 
body of tradition, the latter by the natural discrepan- 
cies to be expected in independent reports of oral 
teaching. 

Now no doubt this theory has in it a certain amount 
of truth. The words of Jesus, at any rate, must early 
have become to a certain extent fixed in form, for it 
would have been impossible, when the Gospel litera- 
ture first arose, for any one to reproduce the longer 
sayings and discourses which have come down to us, 
without some such oral tradition as this to fall back 
upon. But the more one tries to make this serve for 
explaining the whole problem, the less he will find that 
it will answer. For however it may seem at first to 
account for the verbal resemblances, it by no means 
accounts so well for the resemblances in order. Let us, 
for example, compare roughly Mark with Luke. Up 
to Luke 9 : 17, we find that Luke has nearly every 
incident that Mark has, and, with a very few excep- 
tions, in the same sequence. Then, after omitting a 
section from Mark, Luke follows his order up to 9 : 51. 
Then comes a long section which is peculiar to Luke, 
but at the end of this section he takes up Mark again 
where he left off, and follows Mark's order to the end. 
That is, we may put it as a general rule, to which 
there are hardly a handful of exceptions, that the sec- 
tions which are common to Luke and Mark are placed 
by them in the same relative position to one another. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 27 

Now clearly this similarity cannot be accidental. 
The order of events, as well as the events themselves, 
must have been a part of this oral tradition. And so 
we have to suppose that it was something very differ- 
ent from what we ordinarily understand tradition to be. 
We must suppose that it was something like the oral 
tradition of the Rabbis, something settled down to the 
wording and to the sequence of events, even to the 
connecting links between the different narratives, and 
then taught by the Apostles and learned by their 
disciples, and everywhere recognized as authoritative. 
We cannot think of such a narrative as this springing 
up naturally from random teachings ; it must have been 
moulded positively into a definite form. Then we must 
suppose that there were schools where this narrative 
was carefully committed to memory by the disciples ; 
single narratives they might have caught simply by 
listening to them, but a long and intricate series of 
events they only could have come to know by memo- 
rizing it. But surely all this elaborate machinery is 
very unlikely, natural enough in the Rabbinical 
schools, where religion had come to be a dead thing, 
but not natural in the freedom and spontaneity of the 
Apostolic age. What is more important, we have no 
trace of anything at all like it, either in the New 
Testament or outside of it. If any such tradition was 
widely spread, we certainly should expect to find it 
cropping out in the Acts or in the Epistles, as well as 
in the writings of the Fathers, a little later on, but no 
such thing do we find. The Apostles appear to have 
confined themselves very largely in their preaching to 
the great historic facts of the Messiahship of Jesus, his 
Death, his Resurrection ; and incidents from Jesus' life, 
and words of his, they only made use of as occasion 



28 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

called for them, for edification, and not with any wish 
to settle details of history. And it is such a clumsy 
way of going to work ; the Apostles, if they went to 
all this trouble must surely have thought that such a 
record was very important, but why then did they not 
think of writing ? it would have been infinitely easier, 
and it would have served their purpose even better. 
This is a very different case from the case of the Rab- 
bis, where the tradition had grown up very gradually 
by small accretions ; here the tradition had to be 
formed outright as well as learned. Besides all this, if 
the form was so important, how is it that our three re- 
ports, which at least, one would think, must have come 
to us at third or fourth hand, after all the care taken to 
secure exactness, should show such decided differences. 
And it is quite conclusive that the differences, as will 
be seen later, so often show that they are dependent 
upon literary motives, motives which would have no 
play in oral teaching, that we can hardly doubt that 
the Evangelists actually had documents before them. 

As for the second theory in its simplest form, that all 
our Gospels drew from a common source, it never has 
been able to explain enough to make it necessary to 
delay upon it. It may be that here too is a partial 
truth, but it will not serve to explain the whole prob- 
lem, unless it is combined with the third hypothesis, 
that the Gospels in some way have made use of one 
another. And indeed this is only what we might have 
looked for. Every author is supposed to make use of 
those who have written before him ; L,uke certainly 
found a number of such predecessors, as he tells us 
himself, men who were at least as near the Apostolic 
age as he was, and a refusal to make use of their labors 
only would have been to lessen the value of his own 



The Synoptic Gospels. 29 

work. That some such interdependence there was 
then will be assumed, but just what it was is still to be 
determined. The possibilities, as we see, are numer- 
ous, and it will be well to begin by excluding some of 
them, so as to simplify the question as much as pos- 
sible. 

In the first place, then, is Mark taken from Matthew 
or Luke, or from both of them together ? At once we 
say that this is not natural to suppose. For Mark is 
by far the shortest of the Gospels, with comparatively 
little that is peculiar to itself, and it is not easy to see 
why any one should have thought it necessary to 
abridge the fuller accounts which he had before him, 
without adding anything that was essentially new. 
To get the history within a shorter compass must, it 
would seem, have been an object with him ; but there 
is no good reason why he should have wished to do 
this, and, besides, it is not always borne out by the 
way in which he goes to work. For, instead of con- 
densing the narratives, he very often expands them ; 
he adds details which are simply picturesque, and he 
even introduces some new incidents of his own, though 
none of these have any great importance. That Mark 
is an abstract of either of the other Gospels singly we 
may dismiss at once ; for if we compare Mark with 
I^uke, for instance, we shall find that over and over 
again Luke is plainly secondary, so that Mark's ac- 
count could not have been derived from him. One 
instance will be sufficient to show this. Luke has this 
saying of Jesus : " No man rendeth a piece from a new 
garment, and putteth it upon an old garment ; else he 
will rend the new, and also the piece from the new will 
not agree with the old." 1 But Mark gives the saying 

1 Luke 5 : 36. 



30 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

in a somewhat different form : "No man seweth a 
piece of undressed cloth on an old garment : else that 
which should fill it up taketh from it, the new from 
the old, and a worse rent is made." ! It is clear that 
Mark has the original form, and so he could not well 
be copying here from L,uke. And Mark cannot have 
drawn wholly from Matthew, for just the same reason 
that he cannot have drawn from Iyuke, because there 
are too many passages in which Mark is plainly origi- 
nal. So when, instead of the question which Mark 
has, ' ' Why callest thou me good ? " 2 Matthew makes 
Jesus say, ' ' Why askest thou me concerning that 
which is good ? " 3 it is plain that Mark did not get his 
more original form from the other Gospel. 

And it is not much easier if we suppose that Mark 
is combining the other Gospels ; besides what has been 
said already, it is not possible to show any principle on 
which he makes this combination. It must have been 
extremely arbitrary. Sometimes he follows one of his 
sources throughout a narrative, jumping over to the 
other for a single word or phrase, and again he forms 
an intricate mosaic from the two. Such a way of going 
to work is very improbable, when we consider that this 
combination and revision of two narratives which go 
over essentially the same ground is not something in- 
cidental to a larger task, but must have been one of the 
author's main purposes in writing ; and it is all the 
more improbable as Mark has a definite style of his 
own, and has not brought over any of the peculiarities, 
sometimes very marked, which distinguish the Gospels 
from which it is supposed he is compiling. Nor, 

1 Mk. 2 :2i. 

2 Mk. io : 18. 

3 Matt. 19 : 17. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 31 

again, is it probable that an editor would have been 
able in so large a majority of cases to escape the sec- 
ondary touches in both of his authorities, following 
L,uke when Matthew was secondary, and vice versa. 

And it is equally unlikely that there is any direct 
connection between Matthew and I/uke ; at most it 
can have been an acquaintance which affected details, 
and not the real substance of the narrative. For as 
one is sometimes plainly secondary and unoriginal, 
and sometimes the other, neither could have been the 
primary source of the other, just as neither could have 
been the source for Mark. And this is especially evi- 
dent when we look at the great body of sayings which 
are wanting in Mark, but which Matthew and I,uke 
have in common. These sayings must have come 
from a common source, but it is also clear that neither 
Evangelist could have got them from the other. Iyuke's 
text to a very large extent is so evidently a free ren- 
dering, almost a paraphrase sometimes, that it is quite 
impossible that Matthew's more original version could 
have come from it ' ; and, on the other hand, the 
original connection which Luke gives to very many 
of the sayings he never could have guessed if he had 
taken them from Matthew. 2 And it becomes especially 
probable that there is not even a slight connection 
between the two, when we look at the account which 
each gives of the birth of Jesus, and of his appearances 
after the resurrection. It hardly seems as if either, 
when he wrote his account, could have known any- 
thing of the other. Matthew, for example, tells of an 



1 Luke 6 : 35-38, 46-49 ; 11:21, 22, 36, 47, 48 ; 13 : 28, 29 ; 15 : 
3-7, etc. 

2 Luke 11 : 2, 9 ; 12 : 2, 58 ; 13 : 24-29 ; 14 : 34 ; 15 : 4, etc. 



32 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

appearance in Galilee which L,uke seems expressly to 
exclude. ' And this is particularly clear in the narra- 
tive of the infancy. It is not so much that the narra- 
tives of the birth and infancy of Jesus differ from each 
other in the two Gospels, as that they are in evident 
ignorance of each other. According to I^uke the 
parents of Jesus openly present him in the Temple, 
and then return quietly home to Nazareth ; I^uke 
knows nothing of any plot of Herod, or of any flight 
into Kgypt. Matthew, on the other hand, supposes 
that Bethlehem was the home of Joseph and Mary. 
Here Jesus lives for some little time ; and when, after 
the return from Egypt, they go to Nazareth, Matthew 
has no suspicion that they had ever lived there before. 
So that for neither of them would it have been possible 
to write as he did, if either had been acquainted with 
the narrative of the other. 

So far then the results are only negative. We have 
found that Mark is not taken from Matthew or I/uke, 
and that Matthew and I^uke are not taken one from 
the other. But when we go a step farther, and ask, 
Do Matthew and I/uke make use of Mark ? we no 
longer find the same objections. Certainly, so far as 
the general narrative goes, both of the Gospels might 
seem to have incorporated Mark almost entire. Up to 
Mark 6 : 45, nearly the whole of Mark's narrative is 
found in Luke, and, as has been said, with two or 
three exceptions in the same relative order of events. 
Then Mark 6 : 46-8 : 27 is omitted, but reasons for this 
can easily be found, and one verse from the omitted 
section I,uke has in the latter part of his book, 2 just as 



1 Luke 24 : 50-53 ; Acts 1 : 4. 

2 Luke 12 : 1. 



The Synoptic Gospels, 33 

when in other cases he leaves out shorter passages, he 
shows afterwards that he is acquainted at least with 
portions of them. 1 And the awkward way in which he 
tries to bridge over the gap shows clearly enough that 
he is making an omission. For Mark reads, "And 
straightway he constrained his disciples to enter into 
the boat, and to go before him unto the other side to 
Bethsaida, while he himself sendeth the multitude 
away. And after he had taken leave of them, he de- 
parted into the mountain to pray. ' ' a Now L,uke stops 
just before this last sentence, and passes to Mark 8 : 27, 
where Jesus is travelling with his disciples through the 
villages of Csesarea Philippi, but he joins the two 
together in this fashion : ' ' And it came to pass, as he 
was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And 
he asked them, saying, Who do the multitudes say 
that I am? " 3 Here we see he gets his connection, 
but it is somewhat at the expense of the meaning ; for 
when Jesus was in the mountains he might have been 
alone, but he hardly could be alone when the disciples 
were with him. Finally, from Mark 8 : 27 to the end 
of the book, we find practically the whole in L,uke. 
And in Matthew the case is not much different. In 
the first part of Matthew nearly all of Mark's material 
is present, although the order is not very closely fol- 
lowed ; and yet even here there are long sections 
where the order corresponds. 4 But from Mark 6 : 14 
to the end, the narratives of Mark, with a very few ex- 
ceptions, are found in Matthew, and, as before, in the 
same order. 

1 Luke 12 : 10 ; 16 : 16-18. 
5 Mk.6: 45, 46. 

3 Luke 9 : 18. 

4 Mk. 1 : 1-28 ; 2:1-3:5; 3 : 22-4 : 34. 



34 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

And when we come to compare the Gospels more 
critically, we shall find the evidence for a dependence 
on Mark appearing constantly. This secondary 
character is perhaps rather more apparent in L,uke 
than it is in Matthew ; if we examine I^uke carefully, 
traces of Mark may be discovered lying everywhere at 
the base of it. The proof of this in detail has been 
given most elaborately by Professor Weiss, and we 
shall not attempt to go over it here ; but as a single 
example the story of Jairus' daughter may be taken, 
as it is given by L,uke and Mark. 



And when Jesus had crossed 
over again in the boat unto 
the other side, a great multi- 
tude were gathered unto him : 
and he was by the sea. And 
there cometh one of the rulers 
of the synagogue Jairus by 
name ; and seeing him, he 
falleth at his feet, andbeseech- 
eth him much, saying, My 
little daughter is at the point 
of death : I pray thee, that 
thou come and lay thy hands 
on her, that she may be 
made whole, and live. And 
he went with him ; and a great 
multitude followed him, and 
they thronged him. And a 
woman which had an issue of 
blood twelve years, and had 
suffered many things of many 
physicians, and had spent all 
that she had, and was nothing 
bettered, but rather grew 
worse, having heard the things 
3 



And as Jesus returned, the 
multitude welcomed him ; for 
they were all waiting for him. 
And behold there came a man 
named Jairus, and he was a 
ruler of the synagogue : and 
he fell down at Jesus' feet and 
besought him to come into his 
house ; for he had an only 
daughter, about twelve years 
of age, and she lay a-dying. 
But as he went the multitude 
thronged him. And a woman 
having an issue of blood twelve 
years, who had spent all her 
living upon physicians, and 
could not be healed of any, 
came behind him and touched 
the border of his garment : 
and immediately the issue of 
her blood stanched. And 
Jesus said, Who is it that 
touched me? And when all 
denied Peter said, and they 
that were with him, Master, 



The Synoptic Gospels. 



35 



concerning Jesus, came in the 
crowd behind, and touched his 
garment. For she said, If I 
touch but his garments, I shall 
be made whole. And straight- 
way, the fountain of her blood 
was dried up, and she felt in 
her body that she was healed 
of her plague. And straight- 
way Jesus, perceiving in him- 
self that the power proceeding 
from him had gone forth, 
turned him about in the crowd 
and said, Who touched my 
garments ? And his disciples 
said unto him, Thou seest the 
multitude thronging thee, and 
sayst thou, Who touched me ? 
And he looked round about to 
see her that had done this 
thing. But the woman, fear- 
ing and trembling, knowing 
what had been done to her, 
came and fell down before 
him, and told him all the 
truth. And he said unto her, 
Daughter, thy faith hath made 
thee whole ; go in peace, and 
be whole of thy plague. While 
he yet spake, they come from 
the ruler of the synagogue's 
house, saying, Thy daughter 
is dead : why troublest thou 
the Master further! But 
Jesus, not heeding the words 
spoken, saith unto the ruler 
of the synagogue, Fear not, 
only believe. And he suffered 
no man to follow with him, 



the multitudes press thee and 
crush thee. But Jesus said, 
Some one did touch me : for I 
perceived that power had gone 
forth from me. And when the 
woman saw that she was not 
hid, she came trembling, and 
falling down before him de- 
clared in the presence of all 
the people for what cause she 
touched him, and how she was 
healed immediately. And he 
said unto her, Daughter, thy 
faith hath made thee whole; 
go in peace. While he yet 
spake, there cometh one from 
the ruler of the synagogue's 
house, saying, Thy daughter 
is dead ; trouble not the Mas- 
ter. But Jesus, hearing it, 
answered him, Fear not : only 
believe, and she shall be made 
whole. And when he came to 
the house, he suffered not any 
man to enter in with him, 
save Peter, and John, and 
James, and the father of the 
maiden and her mother. And 
all were weeping and bewail- 
ing her : but he said, Weep 
not ; for she is not dead, but 
sleepeth. And they laughed 
him to scorn, knowing that she 
was dead. But he, taking her 
by the hand, called, saying, 
Maiden, arise. And her spirit 
returned, and she rose up 
immediately : and he com- 
manded that something be 



36 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 



save Peter, and James, and 
John the brother of James. 
And they come to the house 
of the ruler of the synagogue ; 
and he beholdeth a tumult, 
and many weeping and wail- 
ing greatly. And when he 
was entered in, he saith unto 
them, Why make ye a tumult 
and weep ? the child is not 
dead, but sleepeth. And they 
laughed him to scorn. But 
he, having put them all forth, 
taketh the father of the child 
and the mother, and them that 
were with him, and goeth in 
where the child was. And 
taking the child by the hand, 
he saith unto her, Talitha 
cumi ; which is, being inter- 
preted, Damsel, I say unto 
thee, Arise. And straight- 
way the damsel rose up and' 
walked ; for she was twelve 
years old. And they were 
amazed straightway with a 
great amazement. And he 
charged them much that no 
man should know this ; and 
he commanded that something 
should be given her to eat. 
Mark 5 : 21-43. 



given her to eat. And her 
parents were amazed : but he 
charged them to tell no man 
what had been done. 
Luke, 8 : 40-56. 



Without going into too great detail, some of the 
points may be noticed in which Luke's account is 
secondary. In the first place it is an ' * only ' ' daughter, 
and this looks like an embellishment to make the scene 
a trifle more pathetic. Then the girl's age, which 



The Synoptic Gospels. ^ 

Mark has a reason for giving, in connection with the 
ability of the girl to walk, L,uke brings in at the out- 
set by anticipation. The statement in I^uke that the 
crowds thronged Jesus, most naturally requires the 
accompanying statement in Mark, that they had fol- 
lowed him. In the healing of the issue of blood, I^uke 
makes all answer Jesus' question with a denial, al- 
though this takes the wind out of Peter's words, which 
imply, quite the contrary, that of necessity they must 
all the time be touching him ; and the explanation 
which Mark gives of Jesus' question, rightly an expla- 
nation of his own, and given in connection with the 
question itself, I^uke puts into Jesus' own mouth. The 
description of the woman's fear follows most naturally 
after the statement which Mark has given, and which 
I,uke omits, ' ' And Jesus looked round about to see her 
that had done this thing." The expression "all the 
truth ' ' is amplified in Luke. Passing again to the 
continuation of the first story, the words of Jesus, 
11 Fear not : only believe," are made less dramatic by 
juke's addition, "and she shall be made whole" ; 
and this expression, too, borrowed from an earlier 
part of Mark's story, where it refers to recovery from 
sickness, is not so appropriate now that the girl is dead. 
Then Mark tells how Jesus entered the house, rebuked 
the mourners, and, after putting them out, entered into 
the dead girl's chamber. L,uke confuses this in two 
ways. ' ' And when he came into the house, he suffered 
not any man to enter in with him, ' ' says I^uke, and 
doubtless he refers to entering the chamber, though 
he does not make it perfectly plain. But after this he 
tells about the conversation with the mourners, when 
Jesus already had left the mourners behind him ; he 
reverses the natural order of relation, as it appears in 



38 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Mark. Again, he adds an explanatory clause, 
' ' knowing that she was dead ' ' ; and the statement, 
1 ' he commanded something to be given her to eat, ' ' is 
far more effective from a literary point of view when it 
ends the story. Finally, the charge that no man 
should be told the deed is evidently connected in 
Mark's mind with the stopping of the multitudes as 
soon as the death is announced, for of course the charge 
would be a waste of words if the house was thronged 
with people ; with this, too, goes Mark's statement 
that the mourners were put out. But I^uke, while he 
retains the charge, has omitted what leads up to it. 

Now what we find in this narrative we can find 
throughout. Passages in L,uke appear in a clearly more 
original form in the second Gospel. Details are added 
which are intended to explain the older account and 
to make it more exact. 1 Even in narratives peculiar 
to himself L,uke shows traces of Mark's influence. 2 I^et 
us look only at one case of this, which is by no means 
the clearest case that might be given, but which still 
has some probability in its favor. In Mark the chapter 
on the second coming concludes with these words: 
' ' Watch therefore ! for ye know not when the I,ord of 
the house cometh, whether at even, or at midnight, 
or at cock-crowing, or in the morning; lest coming sud- 
denly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you 
I say unto all, Watch." 3 What we wish especially to 
notice are these two phrases, " at even, or at midnight, 
or at cock-crowing, or in the morning," and " What I 



1 Luke 3 : 15, 22 ; 4 : 5, 6, 13 ; 5 : 17 ; 6 : 19 ; 7 : 21 ; 8 : 46, 
53 ; 9 : 3i, 32 ; 11 : 18 ; 20 : 38 ; 22 : 45, 51 ; 21 : 20, 24. 

2 Luke 4 : 22^, 24, cf. Mk. 6 : 3, 4 ; 5 : 10, cf. Mk. 1 : 19 ; 7 : 
37, cf. Mk. 14 . 3. 

3 Mk. 13 : 35-37. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 39 

say unto you I say unto all " ; the only parallels to 
these phrases are found in a single passage in L,uke. 
"And if he shall come in the second watch," says 
Jesus, ' ' and if in the third, and find them so, blessed 
are those servants ' ' ; and shortly after Peter asks, 
"Iyord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even 
unto all ? " * But in both cases the words come in more 
naturally in Mark. The discourse on the second com- 
ing, as is shown by the warning which is thrown in, 
1 ' I*et him that readeth understand, ' ' is addressed to 
Christians generally, so that such an ending to it is 
very appropriate ; as a question from Peter, on the 
other hand, one cannot see that it has any very distinct 
meaning. And the probability of this conclusion will 
be strengthened when we show, as we shall try to do 
in another place, that the whole of the passage in 
L,uke is only a free condensation of a longer dis- 
course. 

And this connection with Mark appears too in cases 
where I^uke has not wholly understood his source. This 
may be seen in a phrase which Mark uses in the ac- 
count which he gives of the first day at Capernaum : 
"And they were astonished at his teaching, for he 
taught them as having authority, and not as the 
scribes." 2 L,uke, in his parallel account, also uses the 
same word, iS,ov6ia, but it is with a different meaning: 
1 ' And they were astonished at his teaching, for his 
word was with authority. ' ' 3 The narrative goes on to 
tell how the people, in surprise, exclaimed, "With 
authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, 
and they come out" ; and this new meaning of the 



1 Luke 12 : 38, 41. 

2 Mk. 1 : 22. 

3 Luke 4 : 32. 



40 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

word, implying miraculous power, L,uke has carried 
back into the preceding phrase, as will be evident if 
one will compare the similarity of the wording in the 
two places. But it is clear that the word ought to re- 
fer, as in Mark, to his teaching, and not to his miracu- 
lous power, if for no other reason because the miracle 
had not yet been performed. When, too, I/uke, in the 
narrative of the entry to Jerusalem, makes the " cer- 
tain of those who stood there," of Mark's account, the 
owners of the colt, it seems like an inference, and a 
mistaken inference, from Mark's words ; for the way 
in which the objection is made, and the failure to recog- 
nize Jesus' disciples, agrees better with the character 
of bystanders, and it is more likely that there were a 
number of bystanders than that there were several own- 
ers of the colt. Mark, again, in the account of the 
paralytic man, mentions in the middle of his narrative 
that certain scribes were present 1 ; but I^uke antici- 
pates this remark at the beginning of his account, and 
explains it as a concerted meeting of Pharisees and 
scribes out of every village of Galilee and Judaea and 
Jerusalem, 2 which can hardly be considered likely. 
Another misunderstanding occurs in the account of the 
crucifixion, where the offering of vinegar, according to 
Mark's account, was far from being intended in mock- 
ery, as Iyuke supposes ; and where the symbolism which 
Mark attaches to the rending of the veil of the Temple 
is clearly not understood, for it is spoken of as taking 
place before Jesus died. And, finally, the remark at 
the close of Mark's Gospel, "And they said nothing to 
any one, for they were afraid, ' ' L,uke must have read, 
for he tries to get around it by what evidently is a mere 

1 Mk. 2 : 6. 

2 L,uke 5-17- 



The Synoptic Gospels. 41 

makeshift : ' ' Now they were Mary Magdalene, and 
Joanna, and Mary the mother of James ; and the other 
women with them told these things to the Apostles." 

The same phenomena are to be found in Matthew 
also. Here, too, it is clear that we have to do with a 
narrative which in a very large measure is secondary 
and dependent, and that it is dependent upon a source 
which at least strongly resembles our Mark. Incidents 
which in Mark are simply placed side by side, the first 
Evangelist supposes are arranged chronologically, and 
once this leads him into a curious mistake. Mark, 
after he has told how the disciples were sent out two 
by two, mentions the effect which Jesus' fame had 
upon Herod, who saw in him John the Baptist risen 
again. This gives him an opportunity for telling the 
story of how John had been murdered, an event which 
he represents as having taken place some time before. 
After this digression he goes back to his narrative, and 
relates what happened on the disciples' return, namely, 
the journey to the other side of the lake. 1 Now 
Matthew also has the same events, but because this 
journey and the beheading of John are placed by Mark 
together, he supposes that they are connected in time, 
and that one was the cause of the other. 2 But he 
forgets that the story of John's murder had carried the 
narrative backwards, so that really he is making the 
disciples return before they set out. So, too, he has 
changes and additions, 3 sometimes exaggerations, 4 
where Mark's text is undoubtedly original ; the ad- 
dition of a colt, in the account of the entry into Jeru- 

1 Mk. 6 : 7-30. 

2 Matt. 14 : 13. 

3 Matt. 3 : 7 ; 13 : 55, 58 ; 20: 20 ; 21 :2, 19 ; 22 17, 11-13, etc. 

4 Matt. 14 : 21. 



42 The Life and Teachings of festcs. 

salem, in order to make a closer correspondence with 
prophecy, is a very evident case. Again there are a 
fairly large number of instances where Matthew's text 
reads a little unnaturally, or shows an actual miscon- 
ception, which we can explain easily by comparing 
him with Mark. So, for example, in the dispute about 
fasting, 1 Matthew makes the disciples of John the 
questioners, although this is highly improbable. But 
if we turn to Mark we find that he says : " And John's 
disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And they 
come and say unto him, Why do John's disciples and 
the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast 
not ? " 2 Now it is clear that the ' ' they ' ' of Mark is in- 
definite, or perhaps it refers to the Pharisees who have 
been spoken of in the narrative just before; but it is 
also clear that a reader might refer it to John's dis- 
ciples, who are mentioned in the preceding sentence. 
Again, at the end of one of the Sabbath cures in 
Matthew occur the words : "So that it is permitted to 
do good on the Sabbath day." 3 But in Mark the same 
account is introduced by the question, " Is it lawful to 
do good on the Sabbath day, or to do harm ? " 4 and 
to this question the words in Matthew seem to point. 
Another case not quite so evident occurs in the story 
of the rich young man. "It is hard," so Matthew 
reads, ' * for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. And again I say unto you, it is easier for a 
camel to go through a needle's eye." 5 In Mark, how- 
ever, this "again " comes in much more naturally: 



1 Matt. 9 : 14. 

2 Mk. 2 : 18. 

3 Matt. 12 : 12. 

4 Mk. 3 : 4. 

5 Matt. 19 : 23, 24. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 43 

11 And Jesus looked round about, and saith to his dis- 
ciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter 
into the kingdom of God ! And the disciples were 
amazed at his words. But Jesus answered again, and 
saith unto them, Children, how hard is it to enter 
into the kingdom of God." ' One more example may 
be given, which perhaps is to be explained in the same 
way. In Matthew, at the close of the address to the 
Twelve, is a saying which runs as follows : ' ' Whoso- 
ever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a 
cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily 

I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." a 
Jesus has been speaking to the disciples directly, 

II Whosoever receiveth you, receiveth me" ; and the 
way in which he changes now to the expression, " one 
of these little ones," does not strike one as at all 
natural. But in Mark the saying also occurs in a dif- 
ferent connection, and here it reads : " Whosoever shall 
give you to drink a cup of cold water." 3 But just 
before it we find the saying, which also, in a slightly 
different form, stands just before it in Matthew : 
" Whosoever shall receive one of such little children 
in my name, receiveth me ' ' ; and here it is to actual 
children that the saying is referred. So that it prob- 
ably is from this passage in Mark that Matthew bor- 
rows his expression. 

And another fact also points to this same dependence, 
the fact that in Mark there is a definite plot, a clearly 
developed conception of the course of Jesus' ministry, 
which Mark has followed throughout, but which the 
other Evangelists have disarranged. Mark shows how 

1 Mk. 10 : 23, 24. 

2 Matt. 10 : 42. 
8 Mk. 9 : 41. 



44 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Jesus' fame began at Capernaum, and kept constantly 
spreading ; he traces the development of the Pharisees' 
hostility, and of the disciples' belief; he carefully re- 
serves the confession of Jesus' Messiahship for the cul- 
minating day at Csesarea Philippi, and when before 
this the demons salute Jesus as the Messiah, he makes 
Jesus sternly enjoin silence upon them. Then, from 
the day at Caesarea Philippi, the whole is overshadowed 
by the approaching death ; the relations with the 
Pharisees reach their height in a series of attacks and 
counter-attacks, beginning with the triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem, and ending in the success of the Pharisees' 
plots : but even in the midst of apparent defeat, the 
promise of victory appears, in the words of the angel 
at the empty tomb. Any such clear-cut plan, with in- 
dications all the time appearing that point to it, we 
shall not find in the other Gospels, and yet traces of 
this plan which Mark follows are constantly cropping 
out. Mark, for example, tells how, just before the 
choice of the Apostles, Jesus healed ' ' many of the 
sick. And the unclean spirits, wheresoever they be- 
held him, fell down before him and cried, Thou art 
the Son of God. And he charged them much that 
they should not make him known." J Here the pro- 
hibition is closely connected with Mark's view of 
Jesus' Messiahship. But Matthew, in the same ac- 
count, 2 tells how Jesus "healed all the sick," and 
' ' charged them that they should not make him known, ' ' 
although this has no meaning, because Jesus' healing 
ministry he could not possibly have kept a secret if he 
had wished to do so. Then the throngs which at- 

x Mk. 3 : ii, 12. 

2 Matt. 12 : 15, 16. Cf. connection in both Gospels with de- 
fence against Pharisees. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 45 

tended Jesus, Mark is very fond of describing. He 
tells how Jesus must rise up a great while before day 
in order to escape them ; how they crowd about him 
so that none can approach ; so that he has not leisure 
so much as to eat ; how he can no longer openly enter 
into a city, but is without in desert places, and even 
here the people come from every quarter. ! The other 
Evangelists retain some of the elements of this descrip- 
tion, but they do not at all appreciate it. Luke, in his 
parallel to this last passage, only says, " But so much 
the more went abroad the report concerning him ; and 
great multitudes came together to hear, and to be 
healed of their infirmities. But he withdrew himself 
in the deserts and prayed " 2 : he misses entirely what 
Mark portrays so vividly, and we should hardly see 
why he spoke of the desert at all, if we had not Mark 
to compare him with. 

Sometimes also we have evidence that Mark was used 
by both of the other Evangelists in a single passage, 
which shows at the same time that Matthew and Luke 
did not use each other. One such case there is in the 
account of the call of Levi : "It came to pass, ' ' says 
Marls:, "that he sat at meat in his house" 3 ; but 
whose house is meant, there is at least chance for 
doubt. And the other Evangelists we find actually 
have interpreted it in different ways, Matthew suppos- 
ing that it means Jesus' own house, and Luke that it 
is the house of Levi. 4 And in the same way a para- 
bolic saying of Jesus' , which in the second Gospel is 



1 Mk. 1 : 45. 

2 Luke 5 : 15, 16. 

3 Mk. 2 : 15. 

4 Matt. 9:10; Luke 5 : 29. 



46 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

given without remark — " Beware of the leaven of the 
Pharisees ' ' 2 — is explained by Matthew as the teaching 
of the Pharisees, while Luke understands it to mean 
their hypocrisy. 2 Probably Mark means neither the 
teachings of the Pharisees nor their hypocrisy, for he 
adds, c ' And of the leaven of Herod, ' ' an allusion which 
points to the plots which Mark already has mentioned, 
and which the Pharisees and Herodians had entered 
into against Jesus, to the suspicions, therefore, which 
they were instilling among the people. 

And in two other passages, also, this may be seen, 
one of them the passage with which Mark starts in his 
Gospel, the account of the first day at Capernaum. 
Here Mark gives a consistent picture, whose relation 
to the rest of his design is evident, forming, as it does, 
a vivid description of the beginning of Jesus' ministry, 
with the first awakenings of belief, and the foretaste 
of his coming popularity. Jesus calls his four disciples, 
and with them enters their native town, Capernaum. 
It is the Sabbath, and he enters the synagogue to 
teach. The people are amazed at his teaching, and 
their amazement is increased when Jesus performs his 
first miracle. After the service he goes to the home 
of his new disciple, where another miracle takes place, 
the healing of Peter's mother-in-law. The fame of 
these miracles spreads throughout the city, and at sun- 
set the whole city comes together to be healed. But 
Jesus has not come to Capernaum only, and the next 
morning he hurries off to carry the Gospel to other 
cities also. But both of the other Evangelists succeed 
in spoiling this narrative ; in the first place they do 



1 Mk. 8 : 15. 

2 Matt. 16 : 12 ; Luke 12 : 1. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 47 

not notice that it is meant as an introductory piece, 
and they put other parts of Jesus' ministry before it. 
Then both have separated the call of Peter from the 
visit to Peter's house. L,uke has another version of 
the call, which he brings in later on, so that here the 
name of Simon comes up suddenly, without anything 
to tell us who vSimon is. Matthew again, w T ho has 
dropped the account *of the Sabbath cure in the syna- 
gogue, still makes the people wait till sunset before 
they come together, although, judging from the narra- 
tive which he places just before, it was not a Sab- 
bath day at all ; and to L,uke the fact that it was a 
Sabbath day has become a little obscured, for he sa}'S 
not "when the sun had set," but " while it was set- 
ting." And, finally, L,uke in the conclusion misses 
Mark's intention, for he says that the people, and not 
the disciples, sought Jesus and found him. But even 
this has an explanation in Mark ; in Mark Peter tells 
Jesus, "All are seeking thee." 

The other case which we spoke of occurs in the 
account of the last days at Jerusalem, in the discussions 
which Jesus had with his opponents. The last ques- 
tion which is put to Jesus runs as follows : 

And one of the scribes came, and heard them questioning 
together, and knowing that he had answered them well, asked 
him, What commandment is the first of all ? Jesus answered, 
The first is, Hear, O Israel ; The Lord our God, the Lord is 
one : and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with 
all thy strength. The second is this : Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater 
than these. And the scribe said unto him, Of a truth, Master, 
thou hast well said that he is one ; and there is none other but 
he : and to love him with all the heart, and with all the under- 
standing, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as 



48 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

himself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacri- 
fices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said 
unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And 
no man after that durst ask him any question. 1 

Let us see how the other Evangelists treat this pas- 
sage. Matthew, for a reason which will be suggested 
in another place, gives the first part of the incident, 
but he omits the lawyer's answer ; and then, just as 
Mark does, he gives a question which Jesus in turn 
puts to the Pharisees. But that he may not lose 
entirely what he has omitted, the last sentence of it, 
' ' neither durst any man from that day forth ask him 
any more questions," he places at the very end, after 
the question which Jesus asks. But here it loses the 
meaning which it has in Mark, and no longer serves 
as a transition from the questions put by the Pharisees 
to the counter-attack by Jesus. And Luke leaves out 
the incident altogether ; but he takes a sentence from 
it, the beginning of the scribe's reply, " Master, thou 
hast well said," and places it at the end of the pre- 
ceding incident, the attack by the Sadducees, although 
here it is by no means so appropriate. 

So far, then, there is good reason to believe that 
both Matthew and Luke have incorporated into their 
work the narrative of Mark, or, at least, of a book very 
similar to Mark. There are other indications, it is 
true, which will have to be considered later on, and 
which will modify our view somewhat ; but these will not 
affect the general result which has been reached. But 
now we are prepared to go a step further. For, besides 
using Mark, it appears that both the Evangelists must 
have used another document which was distinct from 



Mk. 12 : 28-34. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 49 

Mark ; for there is a large amount of material which 
Mark does not possess, but which is common to both 
Matthew and Luke ; and by far the largest part of this 
material is made up of the sayings of Jesus. 

Let us now sum up our results. Mark does not 
know Matthew or Luke, Matthew and Luke do not 
know each other ; but both make use of an account 
very similar at least to our Mark, and of another docu- 
ment which contained at any rate many sayings of 
Jesus. So far the process has been comparatively 
simple ; but there is one other fact which is a very 
important one, and which offers no little complication. 
Not only do Matthew and Luke agree with each other 
in the case of material which Mark does not possess, 
but they often agree with each other in opposition to 
Mark. To put it in another way, in some of the nar- 
ratives which we have supposed so far that Matthew 
and Luke derived independently from Mark, they 
agree with each other instead of with Mark, and Mark's 
account seems to be a secondary one. There is no 
need to multiply examples of this at present ; one ex- 
ample will be found in the healing of the epileptic 
boy, 1 where the correspondence between Matthew and 
Luke is perfectly evident. How, it must be asked, is 
this fact to be accounted for ? 

There are several ways in which it might be ac- 
counted for. It is possible to suppose that our Mark 
is only a revision of an original Mark, which Matthew 
and Luke use ; and that when Matthew and Luke 
agree, they preserve the reading of this original Mark, 
which the revision has lost. But such a revision is 
very problematical, and indeed critics are not agreed as 
to whether it was an abridgment or an enlargement of 

1 Matt. 17 : 14/, ; Luke 9 : 37 #. ; Mk. 9 : 14^. 



50 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

the original ; in either case the theory presents serious 
difficulties. We cannot well think that the original 
Mark was shorter, because, with very slight excep- 
tions, Matthew and Luke together contain everything 
that is found in our present Mark. The original Mark 
hardly can have been much larger, because, in one of 
the most important features, the order of events, just 
as soon as Matthew and Luke cease to agree with our 
present Mark, they cease to agree with each other. 
Again, Luke might have known Matthew and copied 
from him at times, or Matthew might have known 
Luke. But this we have seen is not at all likely, and, 
besides, it would only account for the resemblance, and 
would not account for the secondary character of Mark. 
Let us apply this to a passage at the beginning of the 
Gospel, the report of the Baptist's ministry, where 
Matthew and Luke agree in opposition to the much 
shorter account of Mark. If this theory is true, then 
the brief account in Mark came first, and was ex- 
panded by one of the later Evangelists, let us say by 
Matthew ; finally Luke, having both accounts before 
him, follows Matthew in preference to Mark. But the 
objection to this is, that Matthew does not read at all 
like a secondary account, while Mark seems clearly to 
be only an abridgment of Matthew. But this very 
passage suggests at once the explanation which we 
conceive to be the true one. Mark also has before him 
the original work which the other two Evangelists 
both use, and from which they draw their sayings ; 
and when he disagrees with Matthew and Luke, the 
other Evangelists are not drawing from him, but all 
alike are drawing from the original source, which in 
this particular case Mark has followed less closely than 
the others have. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 51 

Let us now, to begin with, test the theory by a case 
which is not by any means a simple one, but which 
perhaps can be made plain : we shall go into it at some 
length, because it is a very good example of the more 
intricate phases of the relation between the Gospels, 
and it shows clearly that there is a relationship there, 
if only we can get at it. If any one will examine the 
narrative Mark 9 : 33-50, and compare with it the 
parallel accounts in Matthew and Luke, 1 he will see 
that they present a somewhat complex problem. The 
sayings of which the passage is composed are very 
miscellaneous, and apparently they are put together in 
rather an arbitrary manner. The parallel passages, 
moreover, differ very essentially among themselves, and, 
on top of all, there is hardly a sentence in them which 
does not occur elsewhere in the Gospels in a different 
connection. Taking Mark by itself, indeed, there is 
no great difficulty. Mark, as we shall see, is rather 
fond of combining a few sayings in a connection of his 
own. He has, we may suppose, two incidents to give, 
Jesus' rebuke to the ambition of the disciples, and the 
account of the man who cast out demons in Jesus' name. 
Just what Jesus had said on these occasions he does not 
know, but he selects a few sayings from among the 
logia which seem to him to be appropriate, and these 
he weaves into his account, as he does in many other 
cases. And Luke accordingly, when he has followed 
Mark in giving the bare incidents, stops, for all that 
follows, the sayings about offences, and about the sac- 
rifice of an offending member, he has met with in his 
other source, and he knows what their true connection 
is. But in Matthew the process is more complicated. 



1 Matt 18 : 1-35 ; Luke 9 : 46-50. 



5 2 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

He starts in, indeed, with the incident which Mark 
gives, but he modifies it a little. Apparently he thinks 
that the reply which Mark attributes to Jesus is not 
quite pointed enough, which indeed it is not, and so he 
introduces a saying which really is more appropriate, 
though it belongs to another narrative, where Jesus 
blesses the little children. 1 Then he omits the second 
incident which Mark gives, perhaps because he has 
already made use of one verse of it, 2 and takes Mark 
up again at the forty-second verse, ' ' Whoso shall cause 
one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, 
it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be 
hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in 
the depth of the sea." 

But now Matthew introduces a verse which Mark 
does not have : ' ' Woe unto the world because of occa- 
sions of stumbling ! for it must needs be that the occa- 
sions come ; but woe to that man through whom the 
occasion cometh ! ' ' And if we turn to L,uke, we shall 
see why he did this. For L,uke also has the same two 
verses together at the beginning of a discourse, 3 so that 
they must have been together in the source ; and Mat- 
thew, finding one of them in Mark, turns to the source 
and quotes the other. But then he turns back to Mark 
again, to the sayings about offending members, and 
this time he gets through with Mark for good. But he 
adds two other sayings, because, like what has gone 
before, they have to do with children, one a saying 
peculiar to himself, and the other a parable which he 
takes from the source. This parable indeed did not 



1 Mark io : 15. 

2 Matt. 10 : 42, cf. Mk. 9 : 41. 

3 Luke 17 : iff. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 53 

originally refer to children, but the Bvangelist makes 
it do so by an application of his own. 

And now there follows another series of sayings, 
commencing with certain rules of Church discipline, 
and again we understand why this is introduced if we 
turn to Luke. For we have seen that the Bvangelist 
has already quoted two verses which stood at the head 
of one of the discourses in the source, and this dis- 
course, according to Luke, goes on as follows : ' ' Take 
heed to yourselves : if thy brother sin, rebuke him ; 
and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin against 
thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn again 
to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." 
Now here is the same idea that we have in Matthew, 
and it is likely that the account in Matthew is only a 
development of this. For these words of Matthew are 
not probable in the mouth of Jesus ; they do not have 
the right ring to them ; they point to a period when 
the Church and Church government were in existence ; 
they have all the appearance of ecclesiastical rules. 
The Bvangelist gives them as a definite application of 
Jesus' words ; and then, led by the idea of Church au- 
thority, he adds a sentence which really was spoken to 
Peter, ' ' Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall loose on 
earth shall be loosed in heaven." But although the 
first Bvangelist does not retain the original form of the 
saying about forgiveness, he does retain something 
which points to it. For just below he tells us how 
Peter came to Jesus and asked him, " Lord, how often 
shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him ? 
till seven times? " So that from Matthew and Luke 
together we can reconstruct the whole incident. Jesus 
had said, If thy brother sin against thee seven times in 



54 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

a day, and seven times repent, thou shalt forgive him. 
A little while after Peter comes to him and asks, L,ord, 
did you mean that we only need forgive seven times ? 
After that saying, " If he trespass against thee seven 
times in a day, thou shalt forgive him," when we try 
further to reconstruct the passage in the source, for a 
moment we are at a loss. For L,uke goes on, ' ' And 
the Apostles said unto the I^ord, Increase our faith. 
And the Lord said, If ye have faith as a grain of 
mustard seed, ye would say unto this sycamine tree, 
Be thou rooted up, and be thou planted in the sea ; 
and it would have obeyed you." Of this, however, 
Matthew has nothing. Instead he goes on without 
any break, ' ' Again I say unto you, that if two of you 
shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which 
is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." 
Then comes Peter's question, and Jesus' answer in the 
parable of the debtors. But here Mark comes in to 
help us ; that saying about the sycamine tree he has 
used, with its form slightly changed, in the account of 
the barren fig-tree, and after it he has added two verses. 
1 ' Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye 
pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, 
and ye shall have them. And whensoever ye stand 
praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one ; 
that your Father which is in heaven may forgive you 
your trespasses." 1 But these are exactly the two 
ideas, given partly in the same words, that we find in 
Matthew, the potency of prayer, and the duty of for- 
giveness. Mark has evidently abbreviated the passage 



Mk. ii : 23-25. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 55 

from the source, and it is very significant that he gives 
us just the three thoughts, in the same order, which 
we should get independently by combining the ac- 
counts in Luke and Matthew. And even the parable 
with which Luke closes/ a parable which he must have 
got from some other source, shows enough likeness to 
the parable of the debtors to explain how Luke thought 
of putting it here. 

Now this passage shows, we think, in a concrete 
way, every process which we have assumed ; it shows 
that Matthew and Luke have made use of Mark, and 
it shows that all of our Gospels alike have made use of 
a common source, which still can be detected at the 
bottom of them. And when now we go further, and 
ask how extensive a use Mark, our earliest Gospel, 
has made of this source, we think that we shall be able 
to reach results that are a little surprising. First there 
are the sayings of Jesus which Mark has, and which 
he must have got in this way. He often puts these 
sayings, indeed, in new combinations, but with a very 
few exceptions, which perhaps he got from oral tradi- 
tion, every one of them can be traced back to a prob- 
able, oftentimes to a certain connection in the source. 2 
And the same thing is true of a surprisingly large 
number of the narratives. Matthew and Luke both 
show that they are dependent on Mark, but there are 
also indications, not so numerous, indeed, but still to 
be detected, that Mark also is secondary, that Matthew 
and Luke sometimes have retained the original reading. 
In the account of John the Baptist and of Jesus' tempta- 
tion this is very plain ; let us look at some of the cases 



1 Luke 17 -.jff. 
9 See Appendix. 



56 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

where it is not so evident. To begin with, there are 
four miracle stories which are given by Matthew in a 
very much simpler form than that in which Mark gives 
them, the miracles of the palsied man, 1 the Gadarene, 2 
Janus' daughter, 3 and the epileptic boy. 4 In Matthew 
these stories do not bear the marks of having been 
abridged, and indeed the very fact that they are so 
much shorter and simpler would show that they are 
more original. Tradition does not proceed from the 
elaborate to the simple, but from the simple to what is 
more elaborate. Nor are special indications lacking of 
the secondary character of Mark's additions. In the 
story of the paralytic, the faith which in the earlier ac- 
count Jesus commends consists in the fact that the sick 
man was brought, bed and all. The change which 
Mark introduces, and the whole incident of the open- 
ing in the roof, has always excited suspicion, and it 
becomes doubly suspicious when we notice that the 
incident is closely connected with Mark's pragmatism. 
Mark is constantly insisting upon the crowds which 
followed Jesus, and this appears to be the motive for 
his change ; not so much to give a picture of faith as 
to show Jesus with so many hearers about him that ap- 
proach to him is impossible. Again, in the story of 
the Gadarene, Mark appears at a disadvantage ; for it 
is less likely that a writer who had a good explanation 
before him should change it into a poor one, than 
that, finding in his narrative that two demons were 
made to destroy a whole herd, and not understanding 
how this could be, he should conjecture that a legion 

1 Mk. 2 : iff ; Matt. 9 : iff 



*Mk. 2 \iff. ; Matt. 9: iff 
2 Mk. $'.lff\ Matt. 8:28# 
8 Mk. 5 : 21 ff ; Matt. 9 : iZff. 
4 Mk. 9 : nff. ; Matt. 17 : 14 ff. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 5 7 

of demons had entered into a single man, one for each 
of the swine. And another secondary trait appears in 
the healing of the issue of blood, where Mark retains 
the words which effect the cure just as they stand in 
Matthew, but at the same time makes the cure to 
have taken place before the words are spoken. And 
that the stories really were in the source, and that 
Mark found them there, is further shown by the fact 
that in all of them Luke has points of contact with 
Matthew's narrative, while in one of them, the cure 
of the epileptic boy, he clearly agrees throughout with 
Matthew rather than with Mark. 

Next let us take the two Sabbath controversies, and 
first the story of the plucking of grain on the Sabbath 
day. Here also Matthew and Luke agree in opposition 
to Mark. Not to speak of several minor points of con- 
tact in the language, both omit the saying which Mark 
gives, ' ' The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
for the Sabbath," and both disagree with Mark as to 
the cause of the controversy. ' ' The disciples were an 
hungred, ' ' says Matthew, ' ' and began to pluck the 
ears of corn and to eat ' ' ; and Luke has the same idea 
of it. But Mark says nothing about their eating, and 
makes the offence consist in breaking a path through 
the fields, though the illustration which Jesus uses, if 
nothing else, would make it evident that the other 
version is in the right. The story of the withered 
hand, again, seems to have had a curious history. The 
story, substantially as Matthew gives it, is shown to 
have been in the source by its presence in Luke, ' with 
only its setting changed, and the withered hand 
altered to dropsy. Mark's narrative then can hardly 



Luke lA'.iff. 



58 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

be anything else than his version of the same story, 
for the entire framework of the incident, apart from 
Jesus' words, is identical in the two Evangelists. 
Mark, probably because he is more interested in the 
illustration which it affords of the Pharisees' hostility 
than in anything else, drops Jesus' reply, and instead 
of the Pharisees' question, he makes Jesus ask a ques- 
tion which is somewhat similar to it in phraseology. 
When Matthew comes to this story in Mark, he rec- 
ognizes it, and substitutes the account in the source. 
Iyuke, however, thinks they are two events, and gives 
both. Only the withered hand has got changed into 
the dropsy — lack of moisture vs. excess of it ; — and 
while the question is given as in the source, "Is it 
permitted to heal on the Sabbath ? " it is attributed 
through the influence of Mark's account to Jesus, 
instead of to his opponents. 

Next comes the story of the miraculous feeding, 
and this too Mark appears to have found in his source. 
Not only are there a number of points in the language 
where Matthew and Luke agree, 1 but this seems to be 
the easiest way of accounting for the fact that two 
versions are given of the same event. If Mark had 
found one account in writing, and from some other 
source had got the story in a slightly different form, 
he might have thought that they referred to two 
distinct events ; otherwise there is no good reason why 
he should have thought this. In the story of the 
transfiguration, too, Mark's account seems to be 
secondary, and in several minute ways Luke shows an 
agreement with Matthew. In both while Peter is yet 
speaking a cloud overshadows them, and a voice comes 



1 See Appendix. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 59 

from the cloud ; in Luke it is the cloud, in Matthew, 
more naturally, the voice, which excites the alarm of 
the disciples. But both differ from Mark, who thinks 
that the fear is excited by the vision of the two men, 
and who makes Peter's words the result of this fear, a 
thing which, apart from the agreement of Matthew 
and Luke, appears like a misapprehension ; for in the 
words themselves there is nothing to suggest that they 
are the result of fright, and on the contrary, Peter's 
expression, ''Lord, it 's a good thing that we are 
here," is quite in line with his assertive and self- 
confident character. And in addition, the statement 
which all the Evangelists have, ' ' Looking round about, 
they saw no one, save Jesus only," comes in more 
naturally in Matthew, where the disciples in their 
fear have thrown themselves with their faces to the 
ground, and so for the moment have not been 
looking. 

And now, after all this, we should not expect the 
concluding history of the Passion to be wholly inde- 
pendent, and, in fact, we find indications that it is not 
so, indications which in themselves are perhaps not 
always very strong, but which are stronger when they 
are taken all together. These begin with the story of 
the entry into Jerusalem, where Matthew and Luke both 
have a saying of Jesus' in answer to a complaint on the 
part of the Pharisees. 1 These sayings are not the 
same, but they are similar, and it is more likely that 
the presence of one of them should have suggested the 
other, than that, with nothing to suggest it, both 
Evangelists, having so little original knowledge as 
they seem to have, should have brought in a similar 



Matt. 21 : 16 ; L,uke 19 : 40. 



6o The Life and Teachings of fesus. 

saying in the same narrative. Besides this, both ac- 
counts make the cleansing of the Temple take place on 
the day of the entry, while Mark postpones it to the 
following day ; and the account of the answer which 
Jesus gave to his opponents when they asked him his 
authority, 1 an account in which there are several 
points of contact between Matthew and L/uke, has a 
close connection with this cleansing. 

Another indication occurs in the stoiy of the prepa- 
rations for the last supper. While Mark tells minutely 
how Jesus gave directions to his disciples to go into 
the city till they should meet a man bearing a pitcher 
of water, and then to follow him and address the owner 
of the house where he should enter — plainly the ac- 
count of a miracle, — Matthew simply reads, " Go into 
the city to such a man," which seems to be original, 
for the first Kvangelist never abbreviates a longer ac- 
count in a way like this, particularly if by doing so he 
lets go the chance to relate a miracle. Then, in the 
story of Gethsemane, Matthew and Luke both have the 
form, "Thy will be done," while Mark only has " Not 
what I will, but what thou wilt ' ' ; this might, how- 
ever, be due to a reminiscence of the Lord's Prayer. 
But in the account of the denial the coincidences are 
stronger. In both Matthew and Luke the prophecy 
reads, ' ' Before the cock crow, ' ' while Mark has ' ' Be- 
fore the cock crow twice." Both add the sentence, 
"And Peter went out and wept bitterly." Again, in 
Mark Peter is questioned the second time by the maid 
who spoke to him at first, while in Luke it is another 
man ; so that the " other maid," whom the first Kvan- 
gelist speaks of, may possibly be a compromise between 



1 Matt. 21 : 23. 



The Synoptic Gospels. 61 

the two. Then, according to Mark, Jesus says to his 
judges, "Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the 
right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of 
heaven." Such a saying is a little suspicious, particu- 
larly as Jesus hardly could sit at the right hand of 
power, and come with the clouds of heaven at the 
same time, which seems to be intended. Matthew, 
again, has it, ' ' Henceforth ye shall see the Son of 
man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on 
the clouds of heaven," which does not make good 
sense. But in Luke we find, " But from henceforth 
shall the Son of man be seated at the right hand of the 
power of God." If this was the form in the source, 
which Luke has been the only one to retain, it explains 
at once how Mark's misunderstanding arose, and how 
the first Evangelist got his "henceforth," which other- 
wise cannot very well be explained. In the closely 
connected account of the mocking of Jesus, also, Mat- 
thew and Luke both have the question, " Who is he 
that smote thee ? ' ' And, in conclusion, there are a 
number of other verbal coincidences between Matthew 
and Luke. 1 

And not only has Mark taken all his most important 
incidents from the source, but even in the narratives 
which are due to himself he shows his dependence on 
the source in a remarkable way. To take for the pres- 
ent only the most striking example of this, in Matthew 



1 7fvXi%ero, Luke 21 : 37, cf. Matt. 21 : 17 ; eitera&Vy Luke 
22 : 50, cf. Matt. 26 : 51 ; omission of Mk. 14 : 51 and 15 : 44 ; Jtal 
i6zrjKEi 6 XaoS QsGopoov and tov Beov, Luke 23 : 35, cf. Matt. 
27 : 36, 40 ; evstvXi&v, Luke 23 : 53, cf Matt. 27 : 59 ; ov ovk 
rjv ovdsiS ovitca xei/xevo^, Luke 23 153, cf Matt. 27 : 60 ; Eite- 
cpcD6x£v, Luke 23 : 54, cf Matt. 28 : 1 ; d6rpa7i:Tov(5%, Luke 
24 : 4, cf Matt. 28 : 3. 



62 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 



there is connected with the Sermon on the Mount a 
short introduction and conclusion, nearly every sen- 
tence of which has its counterpart in Mark. 



And Jesus went about in all 
Galilee, teaching in their 
synagogues, and preaching 
the Gospel of the kingdom, 
and healing all manner of 
disease and all manner of 
sickness among the people. 



And the report of him went 
forth into all Syria : 



Jesus came into Galilee, 
preaching the Gospel of God. 
Mk. i : 14, 15. 

And straightway on the 
Sabbath day he entered into 
the synagogue, and taught. 
1 : 21. 

And he went into their 
synagogues throughout all 
Galilee, preaching and casting 
out devils. 1 : 39. 

And the report of him went 
out straightway everywhere 
into all the region of Galilee 
round about. 1 : 28. 



and they brought unto him all 
that were sick, holden with 
divers diseases, and torments, 
possessed with demons, and 
epileptic and palsied ; and he 
healed them. 



And there followed him 
great multitudes from Galilee, 
and Decapolis, and Jerusalem 
and Judaea, and from beyond 
Jordan. 

And seeing the multitudes, 
he went up into the moun- 



They brought unto him all 
that were sick, and them that 
were possessed with demons, 
and he healed 
many that were sick with 
divers diseases. 1 : 32-34. 

He healed many, insomuch 
that as many as had plagues 
pressed upon him that they 
might touch him. 3 : 10. 

And a great multitude from 
Galilee followed, and from 
Jerusalem, and from Idumaea 
and beyond Jordan, and about 
Tyre and Sidon. Z'-7f- 

And he goeth up into the 
mountain, and calleth unto 



The Synoptic Gospels. 63 

tain : and when he had sat him whom he himself would, 
down, his disciples came unto and they went unto him. 3 : 
him. 13. 

And it came to pass when And they were astonished 

Jesus ended these words, the at his teaching, for he taught 
multitudes were astonished at them as having authority, and 
his teaching : for he taught not as the scribes. 1 : 22. 
them as one having authority, 
and not as the scribes. Matt. 
4: 23-5 ; 1 : 7 : 28, 29. 

It is evident from this comparison that there is a di- 
rect literary connection between this passage and 
Mark's Gospel, and there are two ways in which the 
connection might have arisen. Our first Evangelist, 
wishing to form an introduction to his account, may 
have gone through Mark, and have picked out these 
passages and put them together ; or, on the other hand, 
Mark may have found the passage in his source, and 
may have used it in a certain way as a basis for his 
representation. Something is to be said for the first 
view, but much more, we think, for the second. Let 
us take some of the sentences by themselves. ' ' The 
report of him went abroad into all the region round 
about" ; this certainly would follow from Matthew's 
account, but in Mark not only is the single modest 
miracle not so likely to have attained this fame, but the 
sentence does not come in naturally. After it we should 
expect the narrative to stop, but instead of this it goes 
on to describe the other events of the same day ; in 
other words, the saying interrupts a continuous narra- 
tive to speak of something that only occurred after the 
events of this narrative were finished. Then the de- 
scription of Jesus' teaching, ' ' He taught them as having 
authority, and not as the scribes," is peculiarly appro- 



64 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

priate after the Sermon on the Mount, from which one 
gets just this impression very vividly ; while in a sim- 
ple statement that Jesus taught in the synagogue, there 
is nothing especially to suggest it. And closely con- 
nected with this, ' ' The multitudes were astonished at 
his teaching, ' ' goes the statement of the crowds which 
followed Jesus ; in Mark, however, this statement is 
connected with the choice of the Apostles, where the 
crowds are rather in the way, and where we are not 
told just how they were disposed of while Jesus was 
upon the mountain. Again, in Mark the description 
of Jesus' choice of the Apostles is not quite natural, 
" He goeth into the mountain, and calleth unto him 
whom he himself would, and they went unto him." 
Whom did he send after them ? Why did he not bring 
them with him ? In Matthew, however, the words read 
much more naturally. And with this conclusion there 
are other things that agree. Luke also opens his ac- 
count of Jesus' ministry with a short passage, which is 
an abridgment of the passage in Matthew, 1 and he 
therefore must have found this in his source ; for that 
both Evangelists should have made the same combina- 
tion of passages from Mark, and that Luke should have 
done this when he goes on to repeat the passages again 
in the connection in which Mark gives them, and when 
an introduction was ready to his hand from Mark, is 
decidedly improbable. Luke, again, when he comes 
to the account in Mark of the choosing of the Twelve, 
takes that occasion to bring in the Sermon on the 
Mount. More than that, he changes the order 
in Mark, and, contrary to Mark, he gives the 
names of the Apostles first, and then brings 



Luke 4 : 14, 15 



The Synoptic Gospels. 65 

in the description of Jesus' cures as an introduction to 
the Sermon. Some such introduction he must there- 
fore have known in the source from which the Sermon 
was derived. And finally, Mark shows that other 
things at least he has borrowed to make up his narra- 
tive. The words by which Jesus is made to announce 
his ministry are those which John the Baptist uses, 
and the words of the demoniac, ' ' What have we to do 
with thee ? ' ' are also found in the account which the 
source gives of two demoniacs. ' Where they are the 
most likely to be original is evident. 

This therefore is the conclusion to which we have 
come, that back of all our Gospels there lies a single 
common source, which still can be restored within cer- 
tain limits by comparing carefully passages in our Gos- 
pels which are parallel. The author of Mark, the first 
of our present Gospels, had this before him, and used 
it as a mine from which to draw the material which he 
needed for his purpose. After him came the other two 
Evangelists, who, with two books now in their posses- 
sion, attempted, each in his own way and with his own 
end in view, to combine them into a single narrative, 
adding besides a certain amount of other matter. But 
what bearing does this have upon the authorship of 
the books ? The earliest tradition which we have about 
the authors is due to Papias, who gives it in these 
words : 

Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down 
accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, 
in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. 
For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. But after- 
wards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his 



Matt. 8 : 29. 



66 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

instructions to the necessities of his hearers, but with no inten- 
tion of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Where- 
fore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things 
as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial 
care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put any- 
thing fictitious into the statements. Matthew put together the 
sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language, and each one in- 
terpreted them as best he could. 

Must we then give this early source which has been 
discovered to Matthew the Apostle? Granting that 
the tradition has some basis to it, this nevertheless can 
scarcely be insisted on, when we call to mind how our 
Gospels arose. The preceding analysis points to a 
somewhat informal and haphazard origin of the Gospel 
tradition, a gradual accretion about an original nucleus, 
each new editor or author adding a little something 
that was new, and leaving a more or less deep impress 
of his own peculiarities on the whole. We have L,uke' s 
testimony that Gospel writing was not considered the 
peculiar prerogative of an eye-witness, but that 
"many" before his time had tried their hand at it. 
Under these circumstances it would be extremely haz- 
ardous to assign the Gospels in their final stage of 
development to any special person designated by tradi- 
tion. When we have got back as far as our data will 
permit, we scarcely have arrived at the Apostle Mat- 
thew, though some such a document as is attributed to 
Matthew must lie at the foundation of it all, if we are 
to account for the surprising accuracy with which 
many of the sayings of Jesus are preserved. But 
while, if Papias' statement is reliable, Matthew's work 
was a collection of sayings, or logia, the source which 
our Gospels used contained a very considerable amount 
of historical matter as well, and this, as will be shown, 

5 



The Synoptic Gospels. 67 

is not always reliable enough to be the work of an 
Apostle. Indeed we sometimes can see traces of more 
hands than one. In two discourses of a less authentic 
character, earlier discourses have been made use of ' ; 
and the Sermon on the Mount, which, as its contents 
show, was spoken only to disciples, the writer of the 
introduction to it has understood as if it were spoken 
to the multitudes. Still more unsafe is it to attribute the 
second Gospel to the companion of Peter. Papias' Mark 
gets his material from Peter, and writes without much 
reference to order ; our Mark derives by all odds the 
most important part of his matter from written sources, 
and his peculiarity lies just here, that his seems to 
have been one of the first attempts to give a real his- 
tory, a systematic narrative, of Jesus' life. This is 
indeed the motive for his book ; the facts which he has 
found strung loosely together he has combined to form 
a definite picture. For this picture he certainly de- 
serves some credit ; but also, in carrying it out, he 
continually is showing his lack of accurate knowledge, 
as will appear more in detail in a succeeding chapter. 
This of course leaves open the question of Papias' testi- 
mony. If that was not based upon an erroneous tradi- 
tion, then either the Gospel of Mark must have 
disappeared, or else it must already have been incorpo- 
rated with Matthew's work before our present Gospels 
arose. 



Matt. 10 : 15 ; Mk. 13 




sfic^ 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FOURTH GOSPEI,. 

DR. ABBOT, not long ago, is reported to have said, 
though we do not ourselves recall the passage, 
that the question of the Fourth Gospel and its 
authorship is a question which has been settled these 
forty years ; and in saying this, Dr. Abbot is only voicing 
a sentiment which is very widespread indeed among re- 
ligious people both in our own country and in England. 
One has only to read the religious newspapers to find 
that this is so, and to see in how confident a fashion 
the verdict is given, as if the whole thing had been dis- 
posed of once for all. Still the newspapers may per- 
haps be pardoned if they are not too accurate at times 
in matters of this sort, and we could listen to them with 
fairly good composure ; but when just the same claim 
is made repeatedly by men who really are leaders in 
Christian thought, and who are deserving of admira- 
tion and respect, we feel that we have the right to 
complain. If when a writer uses such words as those 
of Dr. Abbot's which have been quoted, he means 
nothing more by them than that the arguments for the 
genuineness of the Gospel are so strong that he him- 
self has been convinced by them, then certainly no one 
ever would dream of denying his right to say this as 

68 



The Fourth Gospel. 69 

strongly as he pleased. But to say that, as a question 
among scholars, the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel 
is a settled question, is a very different thing indeed, 
and it never would be said by one who had taken 
impartial account of the literature on both sides of 
the subject. It would not be fair to claim, on the 
other hand, that the spuriousness of the Gospel is a 
settled question, though we think that there has been 
a tendency in this direction, of which the change of 
opinion on the part of certain German critics is one 
significant indication. But what makes us disposed to 
complain of such a claim as that which Dr. Abbot 
makes, is not so much the fact that it is a mistaken 
claim, as for this reason, that it tends to increase a feel- 
ing about the Fourth Gospel which is a most unfor- 
tunate one, and because in itself it usually is an 
expression of this feeling. Of the Fourth Gospel it 
is true in a peculiar way, as it is not true of any 
other book of the Bible, that it has become a test ques- 
tion in theology rather than a question which is purely 
critical and historical. If one is concerned for religion, 
and wishes to commend himself to religious people, it 
is almost impossible that he should do this if he gives 
it out that he does not accept the Fourth Gospel as the 
work of an Apostle, while if one does accept it firmly, 
this is enough, as has been shown more than once in 
recent days, to cover a multitude of theological sins. 
This, we say, is unfortunate, and the more important 
the question that is concerned in it, the more unfor- 
tunate it is. That a critic does not accept the Fourth 
Gospel as genuine is to most people plain proof that he 
simply will not accept it, that he has decided before- 
hand that the Gospel cannot be genuine, and now is 
only concerned to find arguments that will support his 



Jo The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

decision ; so that when the question continues to be 
raised, it is not strange if it is met by a certain feeling 
of impatience, as if a stubborn blindness were the only- 
thing that inspired the attempt. And with this opinion 
of an opponent, it is hardly possible that one should try 
very seriously to imagine to himself that opponent's 
point of view. At the same time we do not deny that 
this is a natural feeling ; on the contrary it is wellnigh 
an inevitable one, and it would be most surprising if 
such a feeling did not exist. For the Fourth Gospel 
does really lie at the centre of the Bible, and more than 
any other book of the Bible it will determine what the 
truth of the Bible history really is. If the Fourth 
Gospel is not genuine, then the supernatural concep- 
tion of Jesus which the Gospel upholds inevitably will 
have to fall away with it ; and if, on the other hand, 
the Gospel can be shown to be the work of the Apostle 
John, then the Apologists are right when they claim 
that really it carries the proof of the miraculous with 
it. 

But in saying this, we wish to guard ourselves against 
a retort which very likely will occur to any who are in- 
clined to be critical. For, they will say, such a state- 
ment only goes to indicate, what we have all along 
maintained, that at bottom it is an aversion to the 
miraculous which underlies all the opposition to the 
Fourth Gospel ; it is the perception that the Gospel 
implies the miraculous which furnishes the sufficient 
proof that it cannot be genuine. That we should con- 
vince any one that it is not a fear of the miracles which, 
in spite of the real difficulties of the subject, has brought 
us to the conclusion which we have reached, we have, 
we confess, but little hope. Still this is the less im- 
portant as the critic who rejects the Gospel is not the 



The Fourth Gospel. 71 

only one who comes with, his prepossessions to the in- 
quiry. Prof. Sanday, who is as fair an opponent as one 
could wish to meet, said not very long ago, if we recall 
him rightly, that while the Old Testament problems 
are not of such a nature that the basis of our faith de- 
pends upon the way in which they may be settled, the 
problem of the Fourth Gospel differs from them in this. 
But one who has a system of religious belief which he 
wishes to retain, and which depends upon the question 
whether a book was written by a certain man, surely 
will not come to that book without his prepossessions 
about it, nor are we able to see how he is likely to be 
a more impartial critic than the man who takes offence 
at the miracle stories. But if our objection to the Gos- 
pel is based upon the miraculous, we at least are not 
aware of it. When we came to the book, we determined 
as much as possible to set aside the miraculous elements, 
and to decide the question, if it were possible to decide 
it, wholly upon other grounds ; and at first, indeed, we 
were strongly inclined to accept the Gospel as genuine. 
But there were other things also which we found, and 
these at last compelled us to do what we had much 
rather not have done, to believe that the Fourth Gospel 
is in no sense the work of the Apostle John ; and the 
reasons for this change we shall now give. 

When we pass from the first three Gospels to the 
Fourth, we find at once that there are very many and 
very obvious differences which have to be accounted 
for. We meet with new persons and new scenes, and 
indeed the whole framework of the history is changed 
completely ; and even in those narratives which are 
found in the older Gospels, there are often divergen- 
cies, some of them slight divergencies, but others very 
important ones. Now in itself, it must be noticed, the 



72 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

fact that such a conflict exists does not prove at all that 
the Fourth Gospel is wrong, and it might even tell in 
its favor. To one who knows how the early Gospels 
arose, it will not appear strange that an eye-witness 
should find many things to correct in them ; and, in 
fact, whoever did not find things to correct we should 
say at once could not have been an eye-witness. So 
that when John contradicts the Synoptists, we cannot, 
to start with, assume that John is wrong, but in each 
case we must ask ourselves which account in itself is 
most likely to be right ; we must ask whether the 
changes which we find are the changes which an 
Apostle, an eye-witness, would have been likely to 
make, or whether there is some other way in which 
they can be more easily explained. 

L,et us begin with a case which, however it may be 
decided at last, is in its main features fairly plain, 
the healing of the nobleman's son, in the fourth chap- 
ter of the Gospel. It is possible that this narrative, 
and the narrative of the centurion's child in the older 
Gospels, may refer to two distinct events. It is pos- 
sible ; but when we notice the very striking resem- 
blances between the two stories, it is hard to get rid of 
the suspicion that it must be the same event that both 
relate. Both occur at the beginning of the ministry 
in Galilee, in both the one who asks for help is a man 
of importance, in both his home is at Capernaum, in 
both a sick child is cured, in both the boy is healed at 
a distance, in both a rebuke to the Jews is implied. 
So that, while we admit the possibility, we do not 
think it is the most natural thing, to suppose that two 
events are meant. But if it is to the same healing 
that both refer, then it is evident that there are feat- 
ures which cannot be reconciled with each other, and 



The Fourth Gospel. 73 

in the case of the most important difference, it is quite 
as evident that, if we must choose between the two, 
the earlier account has all the marks of being the more 
original one. If we turn to this account, we shall find 
that the whole story centres about a remarkable say- 
ing of the centurion's, a saying which excited the 
admiration of Jesus. But this saying John does not 
give, and, more than that, he directly excludes it. 
According to the older account, Jesus had not thought 
of working a cure at a distance, and it is the faith of 
the centurion which suggests this, a faith which Jesus 
contrasts with the unbelief of his own countrymen. 
But in John all this is changed ; here the nobleman 
himself is included in the rebuke, Jesus of his own 
accord performs the cure at a distance, and the noble- 
man, far from suggesting it, only entreats Jesus to 
"come down ere his child dies." Here, we say, if 
either account is right, it is far more likely to be the 
older one ; and the only question is, How are we to 
explain the difference in John's narrative? If the 
narrative is really John's, if it is the narrative of an 
eye-witness, then the only way in which it can be 
explained is to suppose that there has been a confusion 
of memory ; and perhaps it would not be safe to say 
that this is impossible to suppose. But the supposi- 
tion becomes a somewhat dangerous one when we 
remember that it is not a detail of no importance 
which John has forgotten, but the very point of the 
whole story. If John is confused here, and still gives 
his confused recollections so circumstantially, is it not 
likely to lessen a little one's confidence in his accu- 
racy ? And even if it is possible that John could have 
forgotten such a striking thing, yet it must have been 
recalled to him if he had ever read our Synoptic Gos- 



74 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

pels, as it seems exceedingly probable that he had 
done. Now there is another way in which the differ- 
ences might be accounted for, and this way gets rid 
of the difficulty which is found in supposing that 
there has been a slip of memory. The aim of the 
Fourth Gospel is to glorify Jesus ; this much at least 
is certain, whatever the means may be that are taken 
to do it. If now we suppose that the author has taken 
the miracle which he found in the older Gospels, and, 
with this purpose in his mind, has transformed it freely 
to suit himself, we have a supposition which, taking 
the passage alone, will explain the facts at least in a 
plausible way. This will account for the difference 
which already has been dwelt upon. In its early form 
the miracle is not a glorification of Jesus so much as it 
is a glorification of the centurion, and if one wished to 
exalt Jesus' share in it, he would be likely to do much 
as we find in the Fourth Gospel has actually been done ; 
he would make Jesus the one to propose the distant 
cure, he would exalt Jesus' majesty and self-confi- 
dence, and tone down the centurion's faith, he would 
make it seem natural and customary that Jesus should 
command in this way the powers of sickness, instead 
of its being necessary for the sick man to be in his 
presence, as, in the vast majority of cases, the older 
Gospels presuppose. And the other features of the 
story fit in curiously with this explanation. There is, 
for instance, the place at which the miracle happened, 
at Cana, according to John, while the other Gospels 
put it at Capernaum. It might be that the old account 
was corrected by John, but it is not quite easy to see 
why such a detail as this should have dropped out, 
while it is very easy to see how, if one wished to 
heighten the account, the miracle might seem a little 



The Fourth Gospel. 75 

more effective if the distance were increased. Just the 
same thing is true of the conclusion which is given to 
the account. This conclusion is not found in the older 
Gospels, but Matthew's narrative closes w T ith these 
words, ' ' And the child was healed in that hour. ' ' Now 
if the writer had been working over the miracle upon 
the basis of the old account, what is it likely that he 
would have done ? Why he would have done as we 
find has really been done in the Fourth Gospel, he 
would have shown how these words were literally true, 
how the very moment when Jesus spoke was the mo- 
ment of the child's recovery. And that this is the true 
explanation, that the addition is not history at all, at 
least one thing goes to show, the well-known difficulty 
about the time when the cure was performed. Accord- 
ing to John this was about one o'clock in the after- 
noon, and yet, although the servants started out to 
meet the nobleman, and the journey was a short one, 
it was not till the next day that he learned the news. 
No explanation has been given of this which is enough 
to make it seem natural, and we do not think that any 
explanation can be given ; but if we account for the 
narrative in the way in which we have tried to account 
for it, then no explanation will be necessary. 

Now we will not insist that this wa3^ of accounting 
for the narrative is fixed and certain, that it is neces- 
sarily the true way. If the difficulty stood alone in the 
Gospel, if there were nothing more which pointed to 
this explanation, then we should say that undoubtedly 
it was not the true w T ay, and that some other way must 
be found. All that we claim is that it is a plausible 
way, that taken by itself it is even the most plausible 
way of accounting for the facts. But if we find that 
there are other incidents in the Gospel which can be 



j6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

accounted for in the same way, that there are many 
such incidents, then the explanation becomes more 
than a possibility, it becomes distinctly probable. Now 
there are other things in the Gospel which, if they do 
not necessarily demand this explanation, at least fall in 
with it very readily, and as another illustration we may 
take the very next miracle that is recorded, the miracle 
of the man at the pool of Bethesda. Upon the difficul- 
ties in the miracle itself we do not wish to dwell, al- 
though there are some features of it which are a little 
suspicious. This long and unsuccessful waiting at a 
pool with miraculous properties is not altogether easy 
to imagine, and there is the more important fact that 
Jesus volunteers of his own accord to heal the man, 
while in the other Gospels he is accustomed to wait till 
he is asked. But what we want especially to point out 
is the fact that here too, as in the former miracle, there 
are remarkable points of contact with a narrative in 
the Synoptic Gospels, the narrative of the paralytic 
borne of four. Here the helplessness of the man and 
the character of his sickness is the same, the command 
of Jesus and the result which followed it are given in 
just the same words, in both Jesus assumes that the 
man's sickness is due to sin, and both give rise to an 
accusation of blasphemy on the part of the Pharisees. 
Moreover the narrative in Matthew is closely connected 
in order with the story of the centurion's child, which 
also precedes it in John. Now to understand what the 
force of our argument is, it is necessary, not to take 
this miracle alone, but to look at it in connection 
with the miracle of the nobleman's son which already 
has been considered. Here are two narratives which 
agree in a most remarkable way with two correspond- 
ing narratives in the older Gospels. Is this agreement 



The Fourth Gospel. yy 

an accidental one ? does it stand for nothing ? To us 
it is not possible to believe this ; not easy to believe it 
in the case of the first miracle, and impossible when 
we put the two together. And the explanation which 
in the first miracle we thought perhaps was conceiv- 
able, the explanation that there had been a fault of 
memory, becomes in the second not conceivable at all. 
So that again we are led to conclude, as we were dis- 
posed to conclude before, that the author is not an eye- 
witness, but a man who is freely using and changing 
over stories which he found already before him in 
writing. 

One other narrative it may be well to take before 
going through the Gospel more in detail, the one 
which tells of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany. 
This story is told in John more circumstantially than 
it is told in the Synoptic Gospels ; Mary, for example, 
is the woman who anoints Jesus, and Judas is the 
disciple who objects to the waste of the ointment. 
Now this may go to show that John has a better knowl- 
edge of the event than the older narrators, but it is 
just as possible that it shows something very different. 
Tradition often tends to give definiteness to a story, to 
discover names and add details, and tradition it is quite 
possible has been at work here. Indeed it is rather 
easier to explain how unknown persons should be inden- 
tified with names that were familiar, than to explain how, 
if the one who anointed Jesus was a well-known follower 
of his, and the objecting disciple was the disciple who, 
a few days later, proved a traitor, facts like these should 
come to be lost sight of in the earlier account. Then 
when John makes the ointment a full pound in weight 
the amount certainly is extravagant, and the words of 
Jesus by which he commends the woman are much 



J 8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

more pointed in the older story. But the difference 
which is most significant consists in this, that while in 
the Synoptic Gospels the head of Jesus is anointed, 
John makes Mary anoint his feet, and wipe them with 
the hair of her head. Here again we cannot say 
absolutely that the Fourth Gospel is wrong. Perhaps 
it is right. Still the probability seems to be very 
much against it. For if we turn to the seventh chapter 
of Luke, we find the account of another anointing 
which bears a curious resemblance to John's narrative. 
A woman, we are told, who was a sinner, came and 
stood at Jesus' feet behind him, weeping, and began to 
wash his feet with tears, and to wipe them with the 
hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed 
them with the ointment. Now the evidence for this 
story is not unfortunately of the best, for it shows 
clearfy a dependence upon other narratives. This is 
true of the incident of the anointment, which we think 
is taken from the anointing at Bethany, to which the 
name of the host, Simon, is also due. Then again 
the two sentences spoken to the woman are taken, the 
one from the miracle of the palsied man, and the 
other from the miracle of the woman with an issue of 
blood, and the forgiving of the woman's sins also 
recalls the story of the paralytic. Besides this, Jesus' 
application of his parable is a little confused, a sinful 
woman would hardly have been likely to enter a 
Pharisee's house, and Jesus' rebuke is harsh when we 
remember that he was enjoying the Pharisee's hospi- 
tality. At the same time the story is so beautiful and 
so characteristic that we should be glad to believe 
there was some basis for it, and perhaps the parable 
really was spoken by Jesus to defend some woman who 
had shown an unusual token of her gratitude. But 



The Fourth Gospel. 79 

however this may be, the story in L,uke offers an easy 
way of explaining how John's account arose. In 
Luke the woman bends over Jesus, weeping, and as 
some of her tears fall on his feet, she brushes them 
away with her hair ; and this is not unnatural. But 
that Mary should have poured ointment on his feet, 
and wiped that away with her hair, is plainly not so 
natural, so that John's account seems to be a secondary 
one, and his confusion must have been due to Luke. 
But such a confusion in the case of an eye-witness is 
hardly possible, and it points rather to one who is 
drawing his facts from the Gospels, and has no origi- 
nal knowledge about them of his own. 

This then is our theory, that in the history which 
he gives, our author is taking facts which he has found 
in the older Gospels, and is freely using these facts, 
and transforming them, sometimes, so that they shall 
suit the purpose which he has in view. Such a theory 
demands more proof than has been given for it as yet, 
and so we shall go through the book with some detail, 
and shall try to show that there are many things which 
seem to point to it. And first we will begin with the 
story of John the Baptist. This account, when we 
first look at it, seems to be very different from the 
older narrative. There is the deputation from the 
Sanhedrin, and John's testimony to this deputation, 
an incident in itself not at all improbable, although 
the Synoptists do not know of it. Then three 
times John bears witness to Jesus among his own 
disciples, and of this also the earlier Gospels know 
nothing. And what the earlier Gospels do speak of, 
the Baptism and the Temptation, in John are not so 
much as hinted at ; whether he leaves a place for them 
at all is a somewhat doubtful question. And now 



80 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

with differences such as these, it becomes a little 
strange that the elements of John's account, very 
nearly the whole of them, are found also in the Synop- 
tists. John speaks of himself asa" voice of one crying 
in the wilderness, " and this quotation, hardly natural 
in John's own mouth, the Evangelists we find have 
already applied to him. He bears witness before the 
Pharisees in a sentence which, in the older accounts, is 
addressed to the people, and this earlier connection we 
can hardly hesitate to say is the more correct one. 
Then again, in the Synoptic Gospels, a dove appears 
to Jesus when he is baptized, and a voice from heaven 
attests his Messiahship to him, — an experience clearly 
of Jesus' own. Now the Fourth Gospel has this in- 
cident, or at least a part of it, but here the experience 
does not come to Jesus but to John himself. If one 
feels no trouble in believing that the dove was a real 
appearance "in bodily form," of course it will not be 
hard for him to explain this ; but if he finds this diffi- 
cult to accept, any attempt to reconcile John's account 
with the other one brings in endless complications. 
Then in addition to these there is another point of 
contact which is a peculiarly significant one. ' ' He that 
cometh after me, "says John, "is become before me, 
for he was before me," and upon this testimony a good 
deal of emphasis is laid. But in the other Gospels 
there is a sentence which is suggested by this very 
strongly, " He that cometh after me is mightier than 
I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop 
down and unloose." No doubt it is possible to say 
that these are two different sayings, but it is not easy 
to believe that this is so, particularly when we find 
that the testimony is brought in as something already 
well-known, "this is he of whom I said," and that in 



The Fourth Gospel. 81 

the twenty-seventh verse John practically makes the 
identification himself. But to suppose that an Apostle 
should have altered a saying in so arbitrary a way as 
this is very difficult to suppose indeed. 

And this last alteration goes along with two other 
testimonies to Jesus which the Fourth Gospel attributes 
to the Baptist, one of them the saying, "Behold the 
L,atnb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," 
and the other the long speech to the disciples in the 
third chapter. These three testimonies have all of them 
the same point of view ; Jesus is pre-existent, he comes 
down from heaven, he is, in the theological language 
of the book, the divine Logos, sent into the world for 
the salvation of men. Now this certainly is the point 
of view of the Evangelist, it is exactly the fashion in 
which he speaks of Jesus in other places ; but it is 
most improbable that a metaphysical belief like this 
was held by the Baptist. John's conception of the 
Messiah, if we can judge from his sayings in the Gos- 
pels, did not differ radically from the best conceptions 
of his day ; to him the Messiah was a king, a con- 
queror, whose task it was to lay the axe to the root of 
the trees, to sift th.e chaff from the wheat, to execute 
vengeance upon God's enemies, and bring about the 
triumph of his people. And from a view like this to 
get the view of the Fourth Gospel, it is not, we think, 
historically possible to do, for the two sets of sayings 
show an altogether different type of mind. And closely 
connected with this, there is another point in which 
the two accounts cannot easily be made to agree. 
John, after his imprisonment, sent to Jesus with a 
question about his Messiahship, and this question 
makes it evident that there was a doubt upon the 
matter in John's mind. But while we can understand 



82 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

how John, with a tendency to believe that Jesus was 
the Messiah, afterwards might be led by circumstances 
to be in doubt about it, we cannot understand this if 
John's belief was so clear and definite as the Fourth 
Gospel makes it out to be. If a divine token had been 
revealed to John, and he had clearly recognized this 
token in Jesus, if again and again he had borne witness 
to Jesus' Messiahship with perfect confidence, if his 
clearest and most unequivocal testimony had been 
given after Jesus for some time had been engaged in a 
ministry which did not in the least point to a visible 
and temporal kingdom, then John's doubt becomes 
very strange, and we do not think that it can be natu- 
rally explained. And still one thing more, if John 
spoke in this way, how is it that John's disciples still 
held aloof from Jesus, that "he to whom John bare 
witness beyond Jordan " is still to them their master's 
rival, a man to be jealous of, a man with whom John's 
death even does not bring them into fellowship ? This 
too we find not easily answered. 

There are these difficulties, then, in the account 
which the Fourth Gospel gives. We do not wish to 
be too positive, and we will grant to the defenders of 
the book that, not easily indeed, nor without violence, 
but still after some fashion they all of them may be 
accounted for. But also we wish to point out how 
simply, with how little forcing, they may be explained 
upon our theory. This strange baptism of the Son of 
God by a sinful man, this submission to the power of 
the devil in the wilderness, what could be more natural 
than to drop out such stories as really not to be explained, 
and in their place to show how clearly the forerunner had 
recognized his master ? First to the Jews, then to the 
disciples, — naturally these testimonies would fall into a 



The Fourth Gospel. 83 

series of three, a favorite number with the Evangelist. 
A dove, so tradition said, had appeared to Jesus ; then 
the Baptist too must have seen it, it must have been a 
sign to him, a sign that already had been foretold, a 
sign which he could not have kept his disciples igno- 
rant of, — no reasoning could be simpler. Jesus must ap- 
pear, too, that witness may be borne to him, a shadowy 
form, indeed, moving mysteriously by in the distance ; 
what doing ? whither going ? what need to ask if only 
he give the Baptist a chance to speak ! And then if 
the Baptist was a man sent from God, he must have 
recognized Jesus plainly, he must have recognized him, 
not as the Messiah only, but as the pre-existent Son of 
God ; and if the early Gospels did not tell of this, then 
the early Gospels could not have been complete. 

After the testimony which the Baptist gives, there 
comes an account of the call of several of John's disciples, 
and here again the difference from the old account is 
noticeable. In the Synoptics, though here too there are 
difficulties to be met, Jesus gradually gathers the band 
of Apostles about him, for not all at once does he meet 
with the men whom he wants ; but in the Fourth Gos- 
pel they are ready to his hand, and six of them he has 
at the end of the second day. Which one of these ac- 
counts is in itself more likely to be the true one, the 
historical one, we can hardly doubt ; if one had wished 
to glorify Jesus, this is just the way he would have 
gone to work. To glorify Jesus, — that is what every 
detail seems fitted to do. Jesus does not test and judge 
men in a human way, but at a glance he knows what 
is in them. Peter is a rock, Nathan ael is an Israelite 
without guile, and even definite facts in Nathanael's 
life Jesus knows miraculously ; when we come to see 
what this knowledge makes necessary, when we apply 



84 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

it, as the Evangelist does, even to the case of Judas, 
and say that Jesus had chosen Judas, knowing that he 
would prove a traitor, then w T e see how absurd and im- 
possible it becomes. And what also makes it hard to 
accept this account is the fact that already the older 
Evangelists have told how four of these disciples re- 
ceived a call from Jesus in a way that is altogether dif- 
ferent. Of this calling in Galilee, by the Lake of 
Genneseret, John does not speak, and it is difficult to 
find a place in his account where the event is possible. 
Jesus, in the Fourth Gospel, goes to Cana, to Caper- 
naum, to Judaea, where for seven months he baptizes, 
to Galilee again, and all this time his disciples are with 
him, as a fixed part of his household. Who are these 
disciples ? naturally of course they are the disciples 
whom John already has mentioned. If now the other 
account is to be brought into the narrative of John, we 
must suppose that when Jesus came this second time 
into Galilee, after the disciples had been with him for 
many months, he disbanded them for a time, to collect 
them together again in the manner of which our Syn- 
optic Gospels have given an account. But if John 
gave the least hint of this, which he does not, if such 
a cessation of Jesus' ministry were probable, if it could 
be explained how this first year dropped completely out 
of tradition, still the fact remains that the old account 
means to tell of a first call, and is not intelligible if we 
explain it in any other way ; so that no real harmony 
between the two can be admitted. 

For the moment we will pass by the miracle at Cana, 
which has nothing in the Synoptics to correspond with 
it, and will come to the cleansing of the Temple. And 
this event is so closely connected with another difference 
between the two traditions, the most striking difference 



The Fourth Gospel. 85 

of all, that we shall take up the two together. If we 
had the Synoptic Gospels alone, we undoubtedly should 
suppose that Jesus' ministry lasted at the most a 
little over a year, and that, except for a few days at 
Jerusalem before his death, it was confined chiefly to 
Galilee. But the Fourth Gospel contradicts this de- 
cidedly ; it extends Jesus' public life to several years, 
and it gives to him a ministry, an extended one, in 
Judaea and in Jerusalem, as well as in Galilee. Now 
it would be very unsafe to rest much in the matter of 
chronology upon the authority of the early Gospels, for 
they seem to have had no chronological data worth 
speaking of to go on, and it only is the fact that they 
lump all the narratives together, which makes it 
appear that these were included in a single year. So 
far as the mere fact goes, then, it may very well be that 
John is nearer to the truth when he assigns a longer 
duration to Jesus' public life ; nor is it impossible that 
a ministry in Judaea should have been lost sight of by 
tradition. But when we consider the nature of the 
ministry which John tells of, then the matter begins to 
take on a different complexion. According to John, 
after a few days at Capernaum Jesus goes straight to 
Jerusalem, and for the next seven months, until 
December, he labors in Judaea. Then he goes back 
to Galilee, where, if John is right, he disbands his dis- 
ciples for a season ; but very soon we find him again 
in Jerusalem, in all probability at the feast of Purim, 
in March. In April he again is in Galilee, and from 
this time we lose sight of him till October, when he 
comes to the feast of Tabernacles ; and in December 
he still is in Jerusalem. Till the next April again he 
is in hiding, when he appears to meet his fate. Jesus, 
then, passes as much of his time in Judaea as he passes 



86 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

in Galilee, and indeed he passes rather more of his 
time there. If we had the Fourth Gospel alone, we 
even should suppose that the ministry in Galilee was 
an afterthought, that Jesus could not walk in Judaea 
because the Jews sought to kill him, and so went in 
to the northern province, that the Galileans received 
him because they saw his miracles in Jerusalem. All 
this time Jesus has very definite and bitter relations 
with the authorities in Jerusalem, and these relations 
affect closely the future of his life. Could tradition 
have forgotten all this? it seems rather difficult to 
believe. And when we examine it a little more 
closely, the difficulty becomes a greater one. The 
most of the events which the older Gospels tell us of, 
conservative critics such as Weiss have had to assign 
very definitely to a period that lies between two points, 
between the opening of the ministry in Galilee, and the 
feeding of the multitudes, if the history is to be at all 
intelligible. Here take place the rise, the progress, 
and the failure of the Galilean ministry, which the 
early accounts think of as the whole of Jesus' work. 
But if we are to fit this into John's chronology, we 
must assign it — the great mass, let us remember, of 
what is told us about Jesus' life, — to a period which is 
even shorter than the Synoptists allow for it, to the 
few months between the arrival in Galilee, in Decem- 
ber, and the feeding of the multitudes, a little before 
the Passover in April ; and even this period has to be 
shortened by the time it required to dismiss the dis- 
ciples and call them together again, and we have to 
break into it by another journey to Jerusalem at the 
feast of Purim. It is true that we may get a longer 
period by making the feast of John 5 : 1 some other 
feast than Purim, but this is doing violence to the 



The Fourth Gospel. 87 

natural interpretation. In a writer whose chronology 
we can follow elsewhere without any trouble, and who 
is particularly careful to mention the Passovers, it is 
unnatural to drop out a Passover feast and a whole 
year with it entirely without mention. When he 
mentions a Passover in the second chapter, and again 
another in the sixth, we must assume that the one 
follows on the other, unless there are strong reasons 
against supposing this. And here the only reason is 
this very difficult}' which we are urging against the 
Gospel. But the rest of the time, how are we to fill 
that up ? The seven months of the ministry in Judaea, 
of which not a hint has come down to us, although we 
certainly should expect that the impression which 
Jesus' first appearance made would not wholly have 
been lost ; the long stretch from the feeding of the 
thousands to the feast of Tabernacles, from April to 
December ; another long stretch from December to 
April, when Jesus actually was in hiding, — how are 
we to fill these clumsy stretches of time ? And still 
more fatal is the confusion which this brings into Jesus' 
life-work. There is no clear-cut plan, but a strange 
vacillation, a leaving of one work to go to another, 
with success in neither of them, a six months' flight, a 
four months' hiding. But how easily this is all ex- 
plained when we stop trying to harmonize our accounts. 
Jesus must testify to himself in the capital, he must be 
rejected by the rulers, it was at the feasts that he 
would appear, of course, to testify to himself he must 
have appeared more than once ; and nothing was 
easier than to hit upon the threefold Passover scheme, 
when we come to see the meaning of the number three. 
It is true that the intervals between these feasts are 
very hazy and indistinct ; in the most surprising way 



88 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

we find that no sooner is one feast done than another 
is at hand, with only an ' ' after these things ' ' to show 
that any time has elapsed. At the feast of Taber- 
nacles we enter upon what is apparently a continuous 
narration, and all at once we find ourselves in the feast 
of the Dedication, three months later. In March Jesus 
heals a sick man, and the next October he refers to it 
as if it had been yesterday. But why should the 
Evangelist trouble himself for this ? He has brought 
Jesus to Jerusalem, and that is all he cares to do ; the 
trouble he was to bring the commentators he hardly 
could have guessed. 

And now to come back to the point where we began, 
the cleansing of the Temple, which John puts here, 
and which the Synoptists put at the very end, has 
appealed so differently to different persons, according 
to the point of view from which they start in, that it is 
hardly worth while putting much stress upon it. To 
us indeed the event seems more natural at the end of 
Jesus' ministry than at its beginning, because the 
Synoptic Gospels show that Jesus did not enter upon 
his work as a reformer, but that he tried to win men 
by gentleness and by his teaching ; and they imply 
also that the opposition to him began in a very differ- 
ent way. However, we will not insist upon this, if 
others will be content not to argue from it to John's 
originality. 

When we come to the next long narrative in the 
Fourth Gospel, the miraculous feeding and the walking 
on the sea, we find that John agrees closely with the 
older accounts, and so we need not stop here very long. 
Still there are changes to be noticed, and again these 
changes all tend to glorify Jesus. Jesus is the one to 
propose the miracle, he suggests it, not after the multi- 



The Fourth Gospel. 89 

tudes in listening to his words have grown weary and 
hungry, but as soon as he sees them coming to him, he 
plays good-humoredly with the disciples' unbelief. To 
the walking on the sea, also, another stupendous mira- 
cle is added, and the boat is conveyed suddenly to the 
land ; nor do we think that the sudden appearance of 
boats enough to carry five thousand persons across the 
lake has everything in its favor. But the difficulty is 
more serious when, a little farther on, we come to 
Peter's confession. In the older account this is at 
Csesarea Philippi ; here it seems to be at Capernaum. 
In the older account Peter is addressed as Satan ; here 
too Jesus calls one of his disciples " a devil," but it is 
Judas Iscariot, and not Peter. But there is a much 
more important change in the whole spirit of the inci- 
dent. We need not attempt here to decide whether 
Peter's words were the first expression of the disciple's 
belief that Jesus was the Messiah, but this much the 
incident certainly was, a crisis in Jesus' ministry, when 
he had good reason to be doubtful what the answer to 
his question would be. But in John there is no trace 
of this crisis ; the disciples recognize Jesus fully in the 
beginning, their faith is increased by miracle after 
miracle, and now instead of a solemn avowal from 
Peter and a joyful outburst from Jesus, we only have, 
in a tone of grieved surprise, as if the answer were 
obvious enough, " I^ord, to whom shall we go? thou 
hast the words of eternal life." Clearly, from the 
Evangelist's standpoint, the disciples' faith never could 
have wavered, but with this standpoint the verdict of 
history cannot agree. 

It is at the close of the history, in the account of the 
Passion, that John's connection with the Synoptics is 
most extended, and this we shall now have to look at. 



90 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

In their general outline the two agree very well, but 
still the differences are sufficiently marked. First there 
comes the famous difficulty about the day on which 
Jesus was crucified ; was it the first day of the feast, 
as the Synoptics imply, or the day before, the 14th of 
Nisan, as John tells us? We do not care to venture 
into the vast wilderness of learning which has grown 
up about this discussion, since we probably should not 
convince any one who does not care to be convinced. 
We are ready to admit that there are difficulties on 
both sides. That the arrest and trial of Jesus should 
have taken place upon a feast day is not what we 
should have expected, but at the same time the fact 
that Jesus ate the Passover on the night of his betrayal 
is hardly to be denied, and it is not possible to show 
that the Passover could be eaten at any other than the 
appointed time. But again we have to notice the sus- 
picious readiness with which John's account can be 
explained. Naturally enough Christian teachers came 
early to see a type of Christ in the Paschal lamb, and 
to speak of ' ' Christ our Passover who suffered for us " ; 
for all the circumstances of his death went to make this 
almost inevitable. Now the Fourth Evangelist most 
of all would be inclined to a view which gave a spirit- 
ual turn to the old ritual, and at the same time did 
away with it as something literally to be observed ; 
and with this thought once in his mind, it would not 
be hard for him to conclude that Jesus' death must 
have conformed much more exactly to the older type 
than the Synoptists made it out to do, that Jesus must 
really have been slain when the Paschal lamb was 
slain. And there are several indications which, possi- 
bly at least, point to this very thing. The Baptist, it 
will be remembered, points out Jesus expressly as the 



The Fourth Gospel. 91 

Lamb of God. In a speech of Jesus' own, too, there 
is a metaphor which, carried out perhaps somewhat 
too crudely, indicates the same thing, the metaphor of 
Jesus' flesh and blood. Then the anointing of Jesus is 
placed by John, in opposition to the other Gospels, six 
days before the Passover, on the day when the Paschal 
lamb was selected. The account of the Passover meal is 
ignored by John, and the explanations that have been 
given for this, if they are possible explanations, are 
still not quite satisfactory ; but if Jesus was the Pass- 
over lamb himself, of course he could not have eaten 
the Passover, and the omission is explained at once. 
Then John places the sentence of Jesus at noon, which 
does not agree with the older Gospels, but which does 
agree with the time when preparations were begun for 
killing the Passover lamb. Last of all he brings in an 
incident which is quite unknown to the older Gospels, 
and by which he shows that the command which was 
given in regard to the Paschal lamb, that a bone of it 
should not be broken, was fulfilled in the case of Jesus. 
Differences so decided as this will not be found in the 
rest of the account, but still the differences are numer- 
ous, and they are not the most of them easily to be 
justified. There are, for example, the plots of the 
Pharisees against Jesus, which John places back at 
the very commencement of Jesus' ministry. Again 
and again the Jews Xxy to take him and put him to 
death, and they even send officers to seize him ; but 
the officers are overawed by Jesus' words, and return 
without their prisoner, and the Jews do not dare to re- 
sent the disobedience of their subordinates except by 
a harmless sneer. And yet along with this helpless- 
ness, the Pharisees find no trouble in directing the 
ban of the synagogue against all who confess Jesus, 



92 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

the people hardly venture to speak above their breath 
for fear of the Jews, Jesus himself is forced into hid- 
ing, and public orders are given that any one who 
knows his whereabouts shall make it known ; and it 
is just after the most alarming demonstration in Jesus' 
favor that his enemies cast aside their fears and venture 
to seize him. To us it is not easy to think of circum- 
stances which make proceedings such as these quite 
probable, and all the more as a desire to show the 
majesty of Jesus and the power of his words, to repre- 
sent the fruitless struggles of the powers of the world 
against the decrees of God, which only could be carried 
out when the time was come, would concern itself but 
little with the probabilities of history. And the way in 
which at last the catastrophe is brought about, this too 
is significant. So long as Jesus wishes to protect him- 
self from his enemies he has no trouble in doing this ; 
but he is only waiting till the time is fulfilled, till he 
can suffer as God has appointed him, as a Passover, a 
sacrifice for the nation. And when this time comes, he 
goes of his own accord to meet his fate, he insists that 
his death is purely voluntary, he goes to the place 
where he was wont to resort with his disciples that he 
may not seem to be trying to escape, he knows the trai- 
tor from the beginning. Again do we not see how the 
old account would give offence, how Jesus must be the 
decider of his own destiny ? and yet we cannot hold 
this view unless we make Jesus' death nothing less 
than suicide. 

We do not care to dwell in detail upon the rest of the 
story, however instructive such a comparison might be. 
John for example does not tell of the trial before the 
Sanhedrin ; Jesus is taken to Annas and then to Caia- 
phas, and from Caiaphas he is led before Pilate, and 



The Fourth Gospel. 93 

whether there is room here for a trial we feel inclined 
to doubt. Indeed John, if we read him naturally, 
would seem to say that the trial before Pilate was the 
only one. Then the strange incident of a voice from 
heaven, the strange power of Jesus in the garden, 
where his captors fall before him to the ground, — how 
hard these are to think of as real events. And again 
the curious shifting of the scene in Jesus' trial, the 
negotiations with the rulers and not with the people 
concerning the release of a prisoner, the omission of 
the agony in Gethsemane, with only a sentence to show 
that even for a moment Jesus' "soul was troubled," 
the greater minuteness of the fulfilment of prophecy 
in the division of Jesus' raiment, the flowing of blood 
and water from Jesus' side, so doubtful in itself and so 
clearly meant to have a deeper meaning, the enormous 
amount of the embalming spices, — all these and other 
things cannot in fairness be overlooked. All of them 
perhaps may be explained away, and if any one is satis- 
fied to explain them away we have no quarrel with him. 
We only ask that men should see that there is a prob- 
lem to be accounted for, and that one even may find it 
not to be accounted for at all in the old way, and still 
not wilfully be creating difficulties for himself where 
difficulties do not exist. 

Finally we come to the last two chapters of the book, 
to the events which followed Jesus' resurrection ; and 
here too, if we will not shut our eyes to them, the 
difficulties are very plain. Upon the great difficulty 
which we have when we try to conceive of such a resur- 
rection as John's account implies, we will not now 
insist, although that must be allowed its proper 
weight. Nor will we compare the Fourth Gospel with 
the older stories, though here, too, there are things 



94 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

which need to be explained. So, for one thing, the 
appearance of the angels to Mary, which lacks all 
motive here, we cannot well help thinking was taken 
from the older Gospels, where the angels have a real 
announcement to make. On this, however, we do not 
insist, but what we do wish to insist upon is the rela- 
tion which our story bears to Paul's account. To 
Paul the resurrection stood as the centre of his faith, 
and he had made careful inquiries about it when the 
facts still were fresh. Accordingly, he is able to give 
the number of appearances and their order, and in his 
letter to the Corinthians this is what he does. Now 
Paul is our only witness to the resurrection who is 
unassailable, and Paul, in a passage where evidently 
he is trying to be as exact as he knows how, can tell 
only of five appearances — to Peter, to the twelve, to 
five hundred brethren, to James, and to the twelve 
again. But we cannot make this list agree with the 
list which the Fourth Gospel gives. First, there comes 
an appearance to Mary, and this Paul does not men- 
tion ; however, Paul's opinion of women, as we know, 
was not very high, and perhaps he thought that to 
bring in Mary as a witness would only be to hurt his 
case. Then the appearance to Peter, John, it may be, 
does not exclude, and yet one gets a strong impression 
from the account, that the appearance in the evening 
was the first time that Jesus had shown himself to any 
of his disciples. This latter appearance we must iden- 
tify with the one which Paul speaks of, though Paul, 
it is to be noticed, thinks that all the disciples were 
present and does not know of Thomas's absence. Still, 
so far the difficulties, while they are real difficulties, 
are perhaps not inexplicable, but the other differences 
we do not think can be explained in any natural way. 



The Fourth Gospel. 95 

Of the appearance in Jerusalem a week later Paul 
knows nothing, for we cannot think that it is the sec- 
ond appearance to the twelve which Paul speaks of, 
because with Paul this comes last, while with John 
other appearances follow. Besides, the week which 
John speaks of does not give time for the appearance 
to the five hundred, which only could have taken place 
in Galilee. Finally, the scene by the lakeside, a story 
which, it is significant, Luke also has in another con- 
nection, has no point of contact at all with Paul's list. 
So that of the four appearances which John gives, 
there are three which Paul is ignorant of altogether, 
and in the case of the other one the agreement is not 
exact. How are we to reconcile the two accounts? 
Must it not be admitted that they are not to be recon- 
ciled ? 

There are still three incidents which have not been 
spoken of as yet, because it only is in the Fourth Gos- 
pel that they are found, and so they cannot be com- 
pared with accounts which have come to us from other 
sources. But these incidents are so important that they 
cannot be passed by in silence, and to these it will now 
be necessary to go back. The first of these is the 
miracle of the wine, which is found in the second chapter 
of the Gospel. With the question whether a miracle is 
possible we are not now concerned ; but that in this 
particular miracle the difficulties which one has to 
meet are peculiarly great, most critics latterly have 
been willing to admit. To supply a lack of wine 
Jesus' mother hints to him, so it seems almost neces- 
sary to understand, that he should work a miracle, 
although Jesus up to this time never had shown any 
ability to work miracles, least of all a miracle like this. 
Jesus sharply rebukes his mother, and thereupon goes 



g6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

on at once to follow out her suggestion, — then there 
are minor difficulties. Tradition, too, knows nothing 
of the miracle, and this, when we consider how great 
a one it was, will also seem to be a little strange. But 
what after all is the real objection is the fact that we 
can find no motive for the deed which seems at all 
strong enough to account for it. There was no real 
necessity for wine ; the guests already had well drunk, 
and to supply more would only be to lead to excess. 
The quantity of the wine which Jesus makes is, one 
cannot refuse to admit, enormous, and wine moreover 
was not something there was any need should be 
created, but it was to be obtained in a natural way. 
So that there is nothing left for it but to say, as the 
Evangelist says, that this miracle Jesus performed only 
to manifest forth his glory. Now a miracle of ostenta- 
tion is most of all a difficult miracle to hold to. So 
long as Jesus' works are works of love, of mercy, 
meant to help the needs of men, as in the older Gospels 
they for the most part are, then at the least we see a 
reason why they should be performed ; but when we 
take away this motive, and leave only the wonder part 
behind, the magic, one cannot well complain if men 
find this less easy to accept. And here again we can- 
not refuse to see how simply all our trouble is got rid 
of, if only our theory of the Gospel is true. ' ' To 
manifest forth his glory" — that throughout our Evan- 
gelist has it in his mind to do ; and with this in his 
mind is not our miracle just the sort of miracle he 
would have been likely to hit upon ? Already he has 
one miracle before him, the miracle of the bread, and 
this he refers expressly to the breaking of Christ's 
body, to the Eucharist. Evidently then there must be 
another miracle to make this complete, the miracle of 



The Fourth Gospel. 97 

the wine, the blood. A correspondence like this in a 
real event it is not likely ever would occur ; but as an 
idea, a result of reflection, it is quite intelligible, and 
in no other way, we are inclined to think, is it intelli- 
gible at all. 

In the ninth chapter there is another story which 
is not present in the Synoptics, the healing of the man 
born blind. We say that it is not present in the 
Synoptics, though after all the use of material means 
to effect the cure suggests that it may be based upon 
the similar story in the eighth chapter of Mark. In 
itself, however, this story is not so suspicious as the 
miracle of the wine, although there are indeed features 
of it which are suspicious. Again the miracle is to 
glorify Jesus ; Jesus does not heal the man through 
pity, and he even tells his disciples that the man was 
born blind simply that he might have an opportunity 
to work the miracle. Then too the means which he 
uses to effect the cure are very strange, — magical, 
we should almost be inclined to call them. Still to 
the account as a whole we have no very great objection, 
and one might even find in it strong indications of its 
truth. Certainly it is all very vivid and life-like. The 
coolness and keen, sarcastic common-sense of the blind 
man, the discomfiture of the Pharisees, the ludicrous 
eagerness of the parents to keep themselves out of any 
entanglement, the dramatic movement of the whole, is 
admirable indeed ; and to many no doubt this vividness 
of the Gospel seems to be a strong argument in its 
favor. To us however it has always seemed that this 
argument is a very dangerous one, and that rather it 
points quite decidedly the other way. For we have 
been obliged to ask how it is that John has been able 
for so many years to keep in his mind just the details 



98 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

fitted to form a perfect and finished picture ; how, more 
important still, did he get them at the start? We 
have been constantly surprised to find how accurately 
our Kvangelist is informed of events where he could 
not, it would seem, possibly have been present himself. 
So, here, John knows the conversation of the neigh- 
bors, he knows what was said at several interviews 
with the Pharisees, and what passed between the Phar- 
isees themselves. And if we go through the book we 
find constantly the same difficulty ; the conversation 
between the Baptist and his disciples at iEnon, the 
talk with the woman of Samaria, where Jesus was 
alone, the talk among the Samaritans themselves, the 
conversation between the Jews and the impotent man, 
the murmuring of the Jews once and again about Jesus, 
the secret plottings of the rulers in council. He knows 
too the elaborate conversation between Jesus and Pilate ; 
did John follow back and forth at Pilate's heels, or did 
he find some soldier of the guard who had enough 
spiritual insight to report the words ? If only once 
or twice we had to account for this, we should not 
lay stress upon it, but should say that in some un- 
known way, which now we only can guess, the in- 
formation may have come to John ; and even now, if 
one will have it so, the same thing may be true, for 
there is nothing of which we cannot conceive a pos- 
sible way in which it might have become known. But 
still when everything is put together we cannot think 
that it is natural to suppose this, least of all when we 
notice how dramatically the whole is pictured, how 
artistically all things work together to give an over- 
whelming impression of Jesus' majesty and power, can 
we help suspecting that we have to do with an author 
who is not bound down and hampered by a partial ig- 



The Fourth Gospel. 99 

norance, but who can make his picture dramatic and 
effective because his picture is ideal. 

Last of all there is the story which is the most re- 
markable, perhaps, of all the stories in the Fourth 
Gospel, the account of the raising of the dead Lazarus. 
Here again we will not deny that the miracle is pos- 
sible, but, admitting that it is possible, we only 
will ask whether it is likely to have happened, 
whether the proof for it is clear and unassailable. And 
to begin with, no one we think can help seeing that 
the spirit of the miracle, while it is very easy to under- 
stand from the standpoint of the Evangelist, is from 
Jesus' standpoint very strange indeed. That Jesus 
should let his friend die in order that he might raise 
him up again, that he should rejoice at the opportunity 
to work a great miracle, that before the grave he should 
call attention to his glory in a prayer which was ad- 
dressed to the people and not to God, is to the Evan- 
gelist quite natural, but to us we confess it is not 
conceivable at all. It is Jesus' compassion, as we have 
said before, his desire to relieve distress, which most of 
all gives to his miracles a convincing power. That 
now he should reverse all this, that he should create 
the distress in order to relieve it, that he should glorify 
himself at the expense of Lazarus and his sisters, this 
is what we cannot bring ourselves to believe. And 
there is another objection to the miracle which in itself 
is almost conclusive, the fact that no trace of it appears 
in the older Gospels. For among the cures of which 
the Gospels give a great abundance this is by all means 
the one which is the most striking. To raise a man 
who has been four days in the grave, this every one 
must feel is more striking, appeals more to the imagina- 
tion, than to restore a girl who has died scarcely an 



ioo The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

hour before. And not only is this the most striking of 
Jesus' cures, but it is a cure which took place at the 
crisis of Jesus' life, and which had much to do in bring- 
ing that crisis about. That tradition, with all its love 
of the marvellous, should have lost sight of an event 
like this comes little short of being inconceivable, and 
before admitting it we must have evidence for the 
reality of the event which is very strong indeed. 

And now with these objections before us, if we find 
that there is a way which will explain how the story 
came to be thought of, and that there is a curious 
coincidence which only can be accounted for in this way, 
then for our part we cannot any longer be in doubt. 
It happens that there is such a way, and that we still 
are able to point it out. The name Lazarus is not a 
common name in the New Testament, and indeed there 
is only one other place where it occurs, in a parable 
found in the third Gospel ; and the parable of the rich 
man and Lazarus closes with this sentence, " Neither 
will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
And this is just what John's story means to show, that 
not even when Lazarus is raised from the dead will the 
Pharisees believe ; their hatred only is intensified, and 
at once they plot Jesus' death. That the name should 
occur but once, and then should be found in a passage 
which lends itself so readily to an explanation like this, 
is surely a curious fact ; we are not able to think that 
it is a coincidence and nothing more. 

We have now gone through the Gospel, and with 
some detail have shown why we find it hard to believe i 
that the Gospel was written by an Apostle. We have 
not tried to hunt up objections, but have taken only 
those which are on the surface ; and because there are 
so many of them, because they all of them point so 






The Fourth Gospel. 101 

clearly in this one direction, we are not satisfied with 
the attempts which have been made to explain them 
away, although for each one of them an explanation 
doubtless can be found. But it is not an explanation 
simply that we are looking for, we want a probable 
explanation ; and this, although we willingly would 
have done so, we have not been able to discover. And 
there is still one thing more, the discourses of the Gos- 
pel, which of all things is perhaps the hardest to ex- 
plain. Against the speeches of the Fourth Gospel 
there are upon the face of them very obvious objections 
to be brought. They are all long speeches, some very 
long indeed, so that for any one to have reproduced 
them immediately after they were spoken, would have 
been a difficult thing to do, to say nothing of repro- 
ducing them after half a century had passed. Then, be- 
sides, the character of the speeches differs very greatly 
from the sayings of Jesus which the Synoptic Gospels 
give, so that one would be inclined to say that they 
cannot possibly have come from the same man ; and so 
far as the style goes this undoubtedly is true, as all 
critics we suppose are now ready to admit. But that 
the style belongs to the Evangelist and not to Jesus 
does not of necessity count for much, for the ground- 
work of the speeches still might be genuine, even if 
John had been obliged to give his recollections largely 
in his own words. But the matter of the speeches also 
is new, and this is not so easily set aside. The sayings 
of the Fourth Gospel have a strangely different ring to 
them : " Except a man be born of water and of spirit, 
he cannot enter the kingdom of God " ; ' ' No one hath 
ascended into heaven, except he who came down out 
of heaven, even the Son of Man" ; "That all may 
honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He 



102 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who 
sent him " ; ' ' When ye shall see the Son of Man go- 
ing up where he was before " ; "I and the Father are 
one" ; "Before Abraham was, I am"; "All that 
came before me are thieves and robbers ' ' ; "I came 
forth from the Father, and am come into the world ; 
again I leave the world and go to the Father. " In the 
Synoptic Gospels there is nothing to compare with this, 
or at the very most there are only two or three faint 
traces of it ; there Jesus speaks of righteousness, of 
the kingdom of heaven. But here this is the way in 
which Jesus always talks, and we expect nothing else 
of him. Now if Jesus uttered sayings like these in so 
great an abundance, we do not see how tradition came 
to miss them, for we should suppose they were just the 
sayings to be seized upon first. But whether Jesus 
ever could have spoken like this seems fairly to be 
doubtful. Discussions with the Jews about his di- 
vinity, constant claims of a pre-existence, of a descent 
from heaven, of a superhuman knowledge, these appear 
to us far more natural in the mouth of a late disciple 
than in the mouth of Jesus himself. Sometimes this 
becomes evident even to the commentators, and they 
suppose — one case is in the talk with Nicodemus — that 
John suddenly passes from Jesus' words to his own 
reflections ; but there is no ground whatever for sup- 
posing this, and the narrative goes along without a 
break. And the claims which Jesus makes for him- 
self — I am the light of the world, I am the bread of 
life, I am the water of life, I am the vine, I am the 
good shepherd, I am the door, I am the way, the truth, 
and the life, I am the resurrection and the life, — it 
surely is strange that all these claims, so like to one 
another, should have been made by Jesus in the com- 



The Fourth Gospel. 103 

paratively few speeches which John has given ; they 
look much more like the results of reflection upon 
Jesus' person. Nor is it easy to reconcile these say- 
ings with the fact which we learn from the other Gos- 
pels, that it was at any rate only towards the close of 
his work that Jesus claimed definitely to be the Mes- 
siah. Now John himself recognizes this, at least in 
words, for he makes the Pharisees ask Jesus why he 
keeps them in doubt, why he does not tell them plainly. 
But then too Jesus replies to them that he already has 
told them from the beginning ; and truly if the Phari- 
sees could have been in any doubt after all that Jesus 
had said and done, they must have been indeed dull of 
understanding. And another thing which impresses us 
strongly in these speeches of Jesus in the Fourth Gos- 
pel is the lack of sympathy they show, the absence of the 
tenderness and love of Jesus. Jesus takes no pains to 
win men, to conciliate them ; his words are cold and 
judicial. There is no divine sorrow over the blindness 
of his people ; ' ' Unless ye believe that I am he, ye 
shall die in your sins." Jesus assumes from the begin- 
ning that they will not listen to him, and his words are 
only to assert himself, to make them without excuse. 
Even when men are beginning to believe on him, Jesus 
does not try to strengthen the weakness of their faith, 
but only has a cold word of exhortation for them ; 
and when they fail to understand this he sharply repels 
them as children of the devil. These things are on 
the surface ; and when we come to examine the 
speeches a little more carefully, we find that there 
are other things besides. We have had to notice 
already how artistically the book is made up, how the 
details are subordinated to a definite end ; and this is 
even more noticeable in the speeches perhaps than it is 



104 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

in the narratives. The variety in these speeches is 
very small indeed ; from beginning to end it is to the 
same thing that all point. There are a few favorite 
thoughts and phrases which are repeated again and 
again, and which are dwelt upon in every aspect ; one 
speech indeed, is made up entirely of sentences which 
already have been given, and seems to be meant as 
a sort of summary of what has gone before. 1 The 
speeches are bound closely together, often by cross 
references. Jesus refers to a miracle performed seven 
months before, to the disciples he speaks of a saying 
which six months before he had spoken to the Jews, 
the Jews attempt to entangle Jesus in argument by 
bringing up an admission which he had made seven 
months previously. The speeches, too, are closely 
interwoven with the events, they take the events as a 
text, and turn them into figure and symbol. Espe- 
cially does one have to suspect the conversations which 
so often occur, and the questions which are put to 
Jesus ; it would be so easy for an author to think of 
remarks which should help along the progress of the 
speech and save it from monotony, and in themselves 
the remarks do not tell very strongly in favor of their 
genuineness. A conversation with a crowd of men in 
the manner in which the Gospel often represents it is not 
quite easy to imagine, and least of all is it easy when 
Jesus has a miraculous knowledge of what his hearers 
are talking about among themselves. For, to say 
nothing of the difficulty about the miracle, it gives one 
the impression that Jesus had constantly to wait for his 
hearers to talk his words over, and then that he took 
up his discourse again to answer them. And the ques- 



1 John 12 : 44^ 



The Fourth Gospel. 105 

tions themselves are not probable. The misunder- 
standings are too constant and too gross, and often the 
questions are so vague that they hardly have any 
meaning ; too plainly they only give a catch-word 
which Jesus can develop. L,et us take a single dis- 
course and examine it more carefully, and that we 
may not be unfair, we will take one where the argu- 
ments which can be brought forward for its genuineness 
are unusually strong. The conversation with the 
woman of Samaria is very dramatic and spirited, it 
contains several sentences which show deep spiritual 
insight, and it betrays a considerable acquaintance with 
the scenery of the spot, and with Jewish and Samar- 
itan customs. But just because it is so spiritual is it 
suspicious, easy to understand as an ideal picture, a 
foil to the unbelief of the Jews, but not so easy to 
understand as a real scene. The story in the first 
place does not agree with the facts of history. A 
successful ministry in Samaria during Jesus' lifetime 
there are strong reasons for doubting ; after such say- 
ings and such deeds as these the history of the early 
Church and its slow perception of the universal char- 
acter of the Gospel is hardly to be understood. Nor 
is Jesus likely in any case to have amused himself by 
speaking thus to a dissolute Samaritan woman, to 
whom his words must have been without meaning ; 
it is to the reader they are spoken rather than to the 
woman. The questions of the woman, the remark of 
the disciples, the approach of the Samaritans, every 
thing serves as an occasion for this spiritual teaching. 
But the woman's words, however well they serve this 
purpose, are not very probable in themselves. The 
comparison with Jacob, the theological question about 
the place of worship, are brought in somewhat vio- 



106 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

lently ; and one remark in particular, when she is 
made to say, " Give me this water that I thirst not," 
is all the more likely to be a device of the author's, as 
he uses it again when he makes the Jews ask, " Ever- 
more give us this bread." Then also the reply of 
Jesus to his disciples, which gives him the appearance 
of rejecting the food which they have brought to him, 
seems in the connection a little artificial for Jesus to 
have said, for Jesus is not ordinarily so fond of an epi- 
gram that he will give a wrong impression in order to 
get a chance to bring it in. And the words about the 
harvest also, which certainly seem to be closely con- 
nected with what goes before, make no account of the 
time which must have passed before the Samaritans 
could come in sight. But what points most clearly to 
an account which is symbolic and ideal is the strange 
saying about the woman's past life. This knowledge 
on the part of Jesus is a little troublesome, even though 
one holds to the miracles ; if for no other reason because 
it is something exceptional, because Jesus certainly 
depended for the most part upon natural means of 
knowledge. But it seems to us quite plain that we 
have here nothing but an allegory of the Samaritan 
nation, that the five husbands are the five religions 
which, according to the book of Kings, the Samaritan 
settlers brought in, and that the sixth is the pseudo- 
Jehovah whom they now were worshipping. 

If now, after all the trouble that we have been to, 
nothing else is plain, this at least will have been made 
clear, that if indeed we have to do with history at all, 
at least it is with history of a special sort, history 
which only is cared about as it expresses an idea. 
That there should be no doubt about this our author 
tells us himself that it is so, for he says that he has 



The Fourth Gospel. 107 

written that his readers may believe that Jesus is the 
Son of God. Nor has he left it doubtful what the 
Son of God means to him ; at the head of his book he 
has put a prologue in which briefly his philosophy is 
summed up. God, says our author, is pure Spirit, 
whom no man can know directly. But God has 
revealed himself through a mediator, his Word, 
through whom the world was made, and who partakes 
of the nature of God himself. But the world refused 
to know God, and to lead men into light and life the 
Word became flesh in the person of Jesus. To all 
who came to him he gave eternal life, a life which 
consists in perfect communion with God through him ; 
but all men did not accept him, and there came about 
a conflict between light and darkness, between life and 
death, God and the Devil. And so to the world this 
appearance of the Logos proved a judgment, and a 
judgment which was consummated in the very act by 
which darkness seemed to triumph, by the death on 
the cross. This very briefly is the argument of the 
book, though of course such an outline does no justice 
to its sublime and profoundly spiritual conceptions ; 
but what we wish especially to point out is that the 
author's philosophy is not a philosophy which hangs 
in the air, which is something new with Christian 
thinkers, but that it has its roots in a definite school 
of thought which at that time was exerting a deep 
influence over men, the Alexandrian philosophy of 
Philo. We do not mean by this that the Fourth Gos- 
pel is only a reproduction of Alexandrian speculations, 
for, on the contrary, the essential thing in the Gospel, 
the incarnation of the Logos, is profoundly original 
with it ; but still in its whole mode of thought, in its 
conception of God and the universe, it is to Philo that 



108 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

the Gospel undoubtedly goes back. And now with 
this thought before us, that our author is a man versed 
in the Alexandrian thought of his day, who thinks he 
has found the key to that philosophy, its crowning 
glory, in the person of Jesus, we may gather up the 
loose threads of our examination, and see what light it 
casts upon them. Now we are ready to see how com- 
pletely the book is a work of art centring about this 
one great idea, how even in the details of its structure 
the skill of the artist appears, with the dependence on 
the number three which runs through the book. We 
see how a great drama unfolds itself before us, the 
rise, the progress, and the culmination of the conflict 
between light and darkness ; we see how everywhere 
symbol determines the choice of the materials, how 
one miracle shows Jesus as the source of light, another 
as the source of life, how one points to his body and 
another to his blood, how the unbelief of the Jews 
stands over against the receptiveness of the Gentiles. 
And finally we understand how the speeches, no longer 
to be forced painfully into the framework of the older 
Gospels, are only the vehicles of the author's thought, 
and serve to put it clearly and dramatically before us. 

But still, one may say, is it not possible that even so 
the Gospel may have been written by an Apostle ? may 
not John during his stay in Ephesus have come in con- 
tact with the Alexandrian philosophy, have absorbed it 
and filled it out in just this way, may he not have made 
a choice of his material for this purpose, and have had 
a perfect right to do so ? That such a thing is impos- 
sible we will not say, but probable it certainly is not, 
and to understand why it is improbable, apart from 
what has been said already, let us look at it a little 
more closely. Now there are several arguments that 



The Fourth Gospel. 109 

have been urged against John's authorship which we 
shall not attempt to defend. Thus many critics, and 
among them Mr. Arnold, have insisted that the author 
could not have been a Jew ; to us it seems that he could 
not well have been anything else. The Greek of the 
Gospel appears to show this, and so too does the un- 
doubted knowledge which the author has of Jewish 
customs and beliefs, and even of Palestine itself. We 
do not feel quite sure that all his references are correct, 
but at least his mistakes are so few that it would be 
hazardous to lay any stress upon them, least of all upon 
the two mistakes which have been insisted on the most. 
The author speaks of a Bethany beyond Jordan, and it 
is supposed that he means the well-known Bethany near 
Jerusalem, and makes a blunder in the situation. He 
speaks of Caiaphas as the ''high-priest of that year," 
and it is supposed that he confounds the Jewish cus- 
toms with that of Asia Minor, where there was a high- 
priest who was elected yearly. But when repeatedly 
he speaks of the better known Bethany without any 
qualifying phrase, and shows that he knows its situa- 
tion, and when he seems to distinguish this from 
another Bethany, a Bethany "beyond Jordan," it is 
easiest to suppose that really he does mean to speak of 
two towns of the same name ; though whether this 
second Bethany, which never has been discovered, 
actually existed, is another question. And as for the 
other statement which he makes, the statement about 
the high-priest, we cannot help feeling it a little im- 
probable that any one, Jew or Greek, who had so good 
a knowledge of Jewish affairs as our author certainly 
had, should have been ignorant about so very simple 
and notorious a fact as this, not a thing that we could 
easily credit, unless we were driven to it through lack 



1 10 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

of any other explanation. And it is not, we think, 
wholly imagination which sees something of a tragic 
significance in those words " the high-priest of that 
year, ' ' the Death Year. Such a touch we should per- 
haps not look for in an Evangelist like the first three 
Evangelists, but in our author it is quite what we 
should expect. Just so he is telling us in another 
place how Jesus points out the traitor to the disciple 
who is leaning on his breast, and he adds, " He then, 
having received the sop, went immediately out : and it 
was nighty Our author, moreover, is well acquainted 
with the Old Testament, and perhaps he quotes it once 
or twice from the original ; he appeals to it constantly 
for fulfilment of prophecy, and it tinges the most of 
his conceptions. Critics, it is true, when Jesus speaks 
of ' ' all who had come before him " as " thieves and 
robbers," have tried to make the Evangelist responsi- 
ble for a very bitter and uncompromising spirit of anti- 
Judaism, but this is unfair to the whole spirit of the 
book. On the contrary, of the divine character of the 
old religion he speaks often and strongly. The Scrip- 
tures cannot be broken, they testify of Jesus, Moses 
and the prophets wrote of him, Abraham rejoiced to 
see his day, the Temple is to Jesus his Father's house, 
Israel is ra i'dia, God's own possession, salvation 
is of the Jews. It is very true indeed that the Evange- 
list is no longer a Jew in sentiment, and his theology is 
the most spiritual and universal, the freest from national 
limitations, of any that is to be found in the New Tes- 
tament. In general, however, it appears that these pro- 
founder views of his are added to the popular concep- 
tions rather than take the place of them. Belief in Jesus 
because Jesus' words are true he places above belief 
in miracles, but belief in miracles he does not reject. 



The Fowth Gospel. 1 1 1 

Jesus is the resurrection and the life, a resurrection and 
life which is ours here and now ; but he also believes 
in a resurrection at the last day. And with all his per- 
ception that the kingdom of heaven is essentially a 
spiritual thing, he probably holds, as all the early 
church held, to a speedy second coming of the Lord. 
What is somewhat more significant, a point which Mr. 
Arnold specially relies upon, is a certain manner of 
speaking which the writer adopts toward the Jewish 
people and their beliefs, which, so Mr. Arnold thinks, 
a true Jew never could have brought himself to use. 
So he speaks of the manner of the purifying of the 
Jews, of a dispute between some of John's disciples 
and a Jew about purifying, of the Jews' Passover, the 
Preparation of the Jews. Jesus recalls to his disciples 
words which he had spoken to the Jews, and to the Jews 
themselves he speaks of "your law." That Mr. Ar- 
nold has put more emphasis upon these facts than 
naturally they will bear there can be no doubt ; but 
perhaps it is true that in an ordinary case, such a case, 
say, as that of the Englishman whom Mr. Arnold sup- 
poses, we should not expect a man to speak in quite 
so objective a way of his own nation as the author of 
the Fourth Gospel speaks of the Jews. But then this 
hardly is an ordinary case. For as Judaism was a 
religion quite as much as it was a national bond, it 
would not be hard for a Jew of the Dispersion, even 
for a Jew of Palestine, to grow strange to it, if he had 
lived in an atmosphere of Greek culture, and had 
allowed the peculiarities of Jewish belief to drop away ; 
and most of all this would be easy if he were a Chris- 
tian, now that Christianity stood in open antagonism 
to the Jewish nation. But it is when we come to apply 
this to the Apostle John that we begin to feel its dim- 



H2 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

culty, for all the conditions which make it possible are 
signally lacking in the case of John. There is no 
evidence that John in his conception of Christianity 
differed essentially from the rest of the Apostles ; on 
the other hand there is good evidence that he did not 
differ. For when Paul came to Jerusalem ' ' after four- 
teen years," he found John still in the city, working 
alongside of Peter and James, a pillar- Apostle with 
them. Plainly he is mentioned as one who confined 
himself to the Jews, who still looked on Christianity 
as a form of Judaism. Now if John went to Kphesus 
between 60 and 70 a.d., no doubt we might expect 
that his new surroundings would have some effect 
upon him, that he would be broadened a little, and 
that some of his prejudices would fall away. But 
still we must set a limit to this ; environment will do 
much, but it will not work miracles, it will not change 
a man into his exact opposite, and least of all will it 
do this when he has reached the decline of life and 
his real work is behind him. We should be surprised 
if Alexandrianism were to influence him decidedly in 
any way ; but that it should destroy his early stand- 
point altogether, that it should lead him to a univer- 
salism beyond that of Paul himself, that from a con- 
ception of Christianity as a religion for the Jews it 
should turn him to a conception of Christianity as first 
of all for the Gentiles, that those for whom he had 
spent the best of his life in working should now be set 
aside with no trace of sympathy or regret, this seems 
hardly to be credible. And the fact that this uni- 
versalism goes back ostensibly to words of Jesus' 
makes it all the harder to understand ; that John 
should have taken twenty or thirty years to discover 
their meaning is surely strange, and it throws great 



The Fourth Gospel. 113 

doubt upon the words themselves. So that, taking the 
probabilities fairly, it does not appear that the Gospel 
can have been written by one of the Apostles them- 
selves, but it is much more likely to have come from 
some one who had grown up in the atmosphere of later 
conceptions, and who did not need to have so violent 
a change brought about in his ways of thinking. 

Now when one comes to this conclusion he will find 
a number of other things in the Gospel which it will 
throw light upon. For one thing it will make it easier 
for him to account for the unusual wa}' in which John 
is spoken of as the ' ' disciple whom Jesus loved. ' ' This 
we never have been able to look upon as an expression 
which could be wholly justified in a man's own mouth, 
even if Jesus really had shown a very marked favorit- 
ism, which for several reasons must be considered 
doubtful. Then in another place John is spoken of 
as ' ' known to the high-priest, ' ' a statement which is 
much more likely to have been written when the his- 
torical conditions had grown dim and uncertain, than 
to have come from the fisherman himself. True, the 
commentators have found this only means that John 
was accustomed to supply the high-priest's kitchen 
with fish, a thing in itself not quite impossible, if only 
this were what the author said. But these things we 
will pass by, for there is a much more important ques- 
tion that must be considered. The whole possibility 
that John could have written the Gospel depends upon 
the statement that he passed his last years in Kphesus, 
and if this tradition is not true the entire case for the 
genuineness of the book falls to the ground. We hesi- 
tate a little to contradict this tradition ; in upholding a 
theory which Mr. Arnold has set aside as a "vigorous 
and rigorous ' ' theory, we suppose that to many we 



114 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

shall seem to be attempting a tour de force which we 
hardly would venture to attempt if our view of the 
Gospel did not make it necessary for us. However, let 
us first consider how the question stands, and then we 
shall be able to determine better whether Mr. Arnold 
is right in settling it in such an off-hand way. 

What then is the evidence in favor of the tradition ? 
Apparently it is very strong indeed, no less than the 
unanimous testimony of the Fathers from the last part 
of the second century onward. One of these Fathers 
is a bishop in the very church where John is supposed 
to have lived, anecdotes are told about the Apostle, he 
is cited in support of a certain opinion. But clearest 
and most unequivocal of all is the testimony of Irenaeus, 
so very clear and definite that with it the tradition will 
have to stand or fall. Now Irenseus tells us that John, 
the disciple of the Lord, published a Gospel during his 
residence in Asia, and again that the Church of Ephesus 
had John remaining among them permanently until the 
times of Trajan. Papias, he tells us, was a disciple of 
John's, and he gives a saying which Papias had heard 
from the Apostle. But what seems quite conclusive, 
Irenaeus remembers in his boyhood to have heard Poly- 
carp, who also, he says, was a disciple of John, and he 
can recall how Polycarp used to speak of his familiar 
intercourse with John and with the rest of those who 
had seen the Lord. Have we the right to ask for any 
better evidence than this, the words of a man who is 
within a single generation of John, and who has re- 
ceived his information directly from one who knew 
John himself. 

But before we stop here satisfied with our results, let 
us consider for a moment what sort of men these are 
whose testimony we are relying on. We do not in the 



The Fourth Gospel. 115 

least mean that the early Fathers were men credulous 
beyond their fellows, men who were incapable of ap- 
preciating evidence or of detecting the flaws in an argu- 
ment. This is not so ; on the contrary, many of them 
were able and clever men, men capable of reasoning 
acutely, and quite as good witness to a fact as other 
men of their time probably would have been. But 
still no one who reads their writings can fail to see at 
once how completely they are lacking in the power to 
weigh tradition rightly, in the critical estimate of facts 
which modern times lay so much stress upon. The 
Fathers depend constantly upon tradition, they appeal 
to it again and again, but that they have any apprecia- 
tion of the immense dangers to which tradition is ex- 
posed, that they reckon with the almost numberless 
chances for error to creep in, they hardly give us any 
hint. When traditions come in conflict, then they do 
what they can to reconcile them, but to go back of this 
and question tradition itself, to ask whether tradition 
has good grounds for what it says, seems very seldom 
to occur to them ; and this often is as true when they 
are dealing with the Greek mythology, as when they 
are talking about the early Elders and Apostles. Ex- 
cept in unusual cases it is enough for them that a state- 
ment has been made by some one who has preceded 
them ; it does not occur to them to sift the matter any 
further. This clearly does not prevent them from 
telling many things that are true, and the fact that 
they believe them true may fairly keep us from reject- 
ing their statements where we have no special reason 
for doing this. But it also leads them into many mis- 
takes, and mistakes which are so obvious that we 
cannot have any doubt about their being mistakes. 
So that to look with suspicion upon a statement of 



1 1 6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

theirs, to be ready to reject it, however positively it 
may be made, if we find that there is good reason to 
doubt it, is not mere captiousness, but is only what 
more than once we are compelled to do. Is there 
then any reason to doubt this statement which. 
Irenseus makes so confidently ? Yes, there is a very 
strong reason, and to understand what this is we must 
go back to the first part of the century, to a statement 
which is made by another Father, Papias, the Bishop 
of Hierapolis. This Papias was a diligent collector of 
traditions which he published in his five books called 
the Expositions of the Logia of the Lord, and this book 
Irenseus had before him. Now in one extract Papias 
gives us the sources of his information. "If then," 
he sa3^s, " any one who had attended on the Elders came, 
I asked minutely after their sayings, what Andrew or 
Peter said, or what was said by Philip or by Thomas 
or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other 
of the Lord's disciples ; what things (or which things) 
Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the 
Lord, sa}^." This John the Presbyter was, it seems, 
one of Papias' chief authorities. ' ' He asserts, ' ' says 
Busebius, who also had read the Expositio?is, ' ' that 
he heard in person Aristion and the Presbyter John. 
Accordingly, he mentions them frequently by name, 
and in his writings gives their traditions. ' ' Who then 
was this Presbyter John ? 

There can be no doubt whom Irenseus takes him to 
be, for quite certainly he thinks that he is the Apostle. 

1 ' Papias, ' ' he says, ' ' who was a hearer of John and a 
friend of Polycarp ' ' ; and when Irenaeus speaks of 

John, everywhere he means the Apostle. This much, 
therefore, we have to start with ; and now it is hardly 
less certain that John, whose disciple Polycarp had 



The Fourth Gospel. 1 1 7 

been, and whom Irenaeus had heard Polycarp speak of, 
is this same John the Presbyter, whom we meet with 
in Papias. Irenaeus, as we have seen, clearly under- 
stands him to be so ; in just the same way he calls 
him the disciple of the I^ord, and he makes both 
Papias and Polycarp his disciples. And we can see 
that Irenaeus here could not have been mistaken. 
That Papias and Polycarp, living at the same time 
and in the same country, should both have received 
their traditions chiefly from a disciple of the Lord 
named John, that neither should have shown the 
least acquaintanceship with more than one John, and 
yet that these Johns should have been different per- 
sons, is highly improbable. So that this also we may 
look at as settled, unless we should find exceedingly 
strong evidence on the other side, that whenever any- 
thing is said about a John in Asia Minor, it every- 
where has reference to a single man. 

Now let us go back to the testimony of Papias and 
look at it once more in the light of the conclusions we 
have reached. There are only two interpretations we 
can put upon this testimony. It certainly is to John 
the Presbyter, that Irenaeus, and therefore the whole 
tradition of the second century, refers ; and it may be 
that Irenaeus is right, and that the Presbyter is none 
other than the Apostle himself. But if the Presbyter 
is not the Apostle, then the evidence for the residence 
of John in Asia Minor falls awa3' at once ; indeed, 
this residence is really excluded by what Papias 
says. The Apostle John, along with the other Apos- 
tles, Papias has just mentioned, and he has called them, 
too, by the same name, presbyters ; so that if his read- 
ers had been familiar with the Apostle as one who, 
within their own recollection, had lived among them, 



1 1 8 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 

Papias could not have brought in another John in this 
way, without a single mark to distinguish him, as if he 
were the only John whom his readers were acquainted 
with. The fact that he does bring him in in this way, 
shows that his readers were in no danger of supposing 
that by any possibility he could have got his information 
direct from the Apostle. Is then Irenseus right, when 
he makes an Apostle out of John the Presbyter ? This is 
what now must be decided. 

Well, taking the words in Papias by themselves, it 
is pretty clear that no one would be likely to come to 
this conclusion. Papias has already spoken of the 
Apostle John, and when now in the same list he men- 
tions John again, we cannot easily help referring it to 
another person. We might suppose, it is true, that 
Papias is distinguishing what indirectly he had heard 
about John, and what he had heard directly from John 
himself, and this perhaps is not impossible ; but still it 
is far from being natural. The words themselves, then, 
do not naturally fit into Irenseus' interpretation, and 
indeed the only real argument that there is for that 
interpretation is the unlikelihood that Irenseus could 
have been mistaken. Is it conceivable, we are asked, 
that Irenaeus, who with his own ears had heard Poly- 
carp tell of his intercourse with John, could have com- 
mitted so gross a mistake as to confound the Apostle 
with an obscure presbyter ? is not such a mistake al- 
most beyond belief? No, we answer, however great a 
blunder it may have been, it is not, when we consider 
the circumstances, by any means inconceivable. Ire- 
nseus, so he tells us, was only a boy when he listened 
to Poly carp. Now he could remember how Poly carp 
often had mentioned the name of John and had given 
sayings of his, how he had spoken with reverence of 



The Fourth Gospel. 119 

him as a man of great age and authority, perhaps as 
one who in his youth had seen the L,ord. And as 
Irenaeus recalled this in later years there would be 
every inducement for him to connect this name, as 
tradition very likely before this had connected it in 
other quarters, with the Apostle John, and to bring 
the traditions upon which he laid such emphasis into 
direct contact with the Twelve. To be sure we should 
not accuse him of a blunder like this if there did not 
seem to be good reason for doing so ; but the blunder 
is not inconceivable, it is capable of being accounted 
for. 

And that Irenaeus did make a blunder seems to us 
to be almost certain, for to make Papias' words refer to 
the Apostle John is very difficult indeed. In the first 
place it is strange that Papias should call John a 
"presbyter," and " a disciple of the L,ord," but not an 
Apostle. It is true that just before he speaks of the 
Apostles in a body as "presbyters," but this is a very 
different thing from selecting this title again and again 
to name a particular Apostle who is his direct author- 
ity, and in itself the use of the word shows that to 
Papias the Apostles belonged to a past generation, 
which could be spoken of indefinitely as "elders." 
But when he speaks of the Presbyter John, and denies 
this title to Aristion, he apparently is referring to the 
ecclesiastical office which John filled, and this he 
hardly would have done if John also had been an 
Apostle. And then again the way in which John is 
brought in after the unknown Aristion is quite incon- 
ceivable if he were one of the Twelve. And for this 
conclusion, which surely we must come to if we depend 
upon the passage itself, we fortunately are not left 
without a witness. Kusebius, who had the whole 



1 20 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

work before him, and who had carefully examined it, 
says distinctly that Irenaeus had made a mistake, and 
that John was not John the Apostle, but another man. 
Now when we remember that Papias often mentions 
John and gives many traditions which had been re- 
ceived from him, we see how improbable it is that 
Eusebius could have made a mistake about this. 
Papias could not have had an Apostle's authority back 
of him, and still have left his readers in any doubt 
about it ; Apostolic authority was not valued so lightly 
in the second century. The fact that it was not made 
plain, that even a possibility was left for doubting it, 
shows conclusively that it was not the Apostle John of 
whom Papias was speaking. And we have another 
extract from Papias which points to this same thing, 
a long saying about the millennium which is attributed 
to Jesus, and which Papias says was told by John. If 
John was the Apostle then this chain of testimony is 
unusually strong, and yet the saying is certainly not 
genuine, and could not have come from Jesus at all ; 
so that John again hardly could have been the Apostle. 
So then, however gross the blunder may seem to us, 
a blunder we nevertheless must suppose that Irenseus 
has made, upon the testimony of Eusebius and of Papias 
alike. Irenaeus has no other proof to give for the tra- 
dition of John's residence in Asia Minor, only a pas- 
sage in Papias which really tells the other way, and 
the presence in Asia many years before of a disciple of 
the Lord named John. The interest which Irenaeus 
had in believing this to be the Apostle is evident, and 
we can see now how it influenced him, how indefinitely 
he speaks of Polycarp's intercourse with John and the 
rest of those who had seen the Lord, how an Apostle 
grows into Apostles and many who had seen Christ, how 



The Fourth Gospel. 121 

Polycarp was appointed by Apostles as bishop of 
Smyrna. But Polycarp, even if John as the last of the 
Apostles had lived nearly to the second century, could 
hardly have been much more than thirty when John 
died, so that his instruction by other Apostles is almost 
out of the question, and least of all could he have been 
made bishop of Smyrna by Apostles. The whole of 
Irenaeus' statement must be given up, as Kusebius 
long ago saw that it must so far as Papias is concerned ; 
only we must recognize also, what Eusebius failed to 
see, that with it goes the proof of a residence of the 
Apostle John in Asia Minor. 

If John then did not write the Fourth Gospel, where 
are we to look for the author ? at what time did the 
Gospel arise ? The question is difficult to answer, and 
perhaps it cannot be answered at all in a way that is 
wholly satisfactory. There is no external testimony of 
the slightest value which points to any one except the 
Apostle, nor will we deny that the testimony to the 
genuineness of the book is of some weight. To start 
with the last quarter of the second century, we find 
our four Gospels in full possession of the field. They 
are unquestioned, they have no rivals, they are held as 
sacred. So much no one denies, and it is important to 
remember this because it is just for the reason that 
critics have lost sight of these broad facts and have 
plunged themselves into details, that they have come to 
such different conclusions. For when we come down 
still farther, to Justin Martyr, about the middle of the 
century, we find that he too has Gospels which he ap- 
peals to as authority for his facts, " Memoirs," he calls 
them, a7ZO/urr}piov£vjdaTa, composed by the Apostles 
of Christ and their companions. That he is referring 
here to certain definite books, and that too to books 



122 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

which were held in no small esteem, is plain, for he 
says : ' ' On the day called Sunday all who live in cities 
or in the country gather together to one place, and the 
Memoirs by the Apostles or the writings of the Proph- 
ets are read as long as time permits. " Is it then still 
our Gospels that he means, and so invests with Apos- 
tolic authority ? To this question many scholars have 
answered no, and the reasons for their answer are 
briefly these, that Justin's quotations very seldom cor- 
respond exactly with our Gospels, and that a few of 
the facts which he mentions, the statement, for exam- 
ple, that Jesus was born in a cave, or that the Magi 
came from Arabia, are not to be found in our Gospels 
at all. Into this question we do not care to go, but it 
seems quite plain to us that, however Justin may have 
obtained isolated facts, his real sources, those which he 
refers to under the name ' ' Memoirs, ' ' were none other 
than our Gospels. And without entering into any 
minute inquiry we can easily see why this must almost 
needs be so ; we cannot readily conceive that books 
which were looked upon with such high esteem could, 
within twenty-five years, have given place to other 
books, which still could be described in just the same 
terms. It cannot be denied that the evidence for the 
Fourth Gospel is much weaker than the evidence for 
the other three ; still that Justin does use it, and use 
it more than once, there can be no reasonable doubt. 
So he says in speaking of baptism : ' ' For Christ also 
said, ' Except ye be born again 3^e shall in no wise enter 
into the kingdom of heaven.' But that it is impos- 
sible for those who have once been born to enter into 
the wombs of those who brought them forth, is man- 
ifest to all." The quotation is not exact, but the last 
clause shows that he must have taken it from John ; 



The Fourth Gospel. 123 

and apart from this there are at least nine or ten other 
allusions which cannot be explained plausibly except 
as going back to the Fourth Gospel. That Justin used 
the Fourth Gospel, then, we must regard as certain ; 
but it still may be asked whether there is any evidence 
that he regarded it as John's. Yes, we think that this 
too must be answered in the affirmative, for unless in 
Justin's time there had been a strong tendency to look 
upon the book as the work of an Apostle, we cannot 
well explain how twenty-five years later the book was 
accepted without any trace of doubt. But while we 
are ready to admit this, we think that it is very much 
more doubtful whether in Justin's time the book was 
already beyond suspicion, and stood quite on a level 
with the other Gospels, for otherwise it is difficult to 
explain the very sparing use which Justin makes of it, 
a use which will appear the more strange when we 
compare it with the lavish quotations of Irenseus, a 
few years later. Already then at the time of Justin 
the book probably was looked upon as John's, but it 
still was used very hesitatingly, and possibly it was 
not yet read in the churches along with the other 
Gospels. 

So much for Justin. And before Justin's time 
unfortunately the literature which we have is very 
meagre. Still there are witnesses, and the most im- 
portant of these is Papias. But Papias does not men- 
tion the Fourth Gospel in any of the extracts which 
Eusebius has preserved for us, and consequently we 
are led to suppose that he did not mention it at all, for 
if he had mentioned it, Eusebius would have been 
most likely to tell us of it. So some critics have come 
to the conclusion that Papias either did not know of 
the Gospel, or at any rate that he did not accept it as 



124 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 

genuine, and that accordingly we have here at last an 
indication of the time when the Gospel made its ap- 
pearance. Is this a necessary inference, or is it even a 
very probable one ? 

Papias tells us : "I shall not be unwilling to put down 
along with my interpretation whatever instructions I re- 
ceived at any time from the Elders, and stored up in my 
memory, assuring you at the same time of their truth. 
For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those 
who spoke much, but in those who taught the truth, 
nor in those who related strange commandments, but 
in those who rehearsed the commandments given by 
the Iyord to faith, and proceeding from truth itself. 
If then any one who had attended on the Elders came, 
I asked minutely after their sayings, what Andrew or 
Peter said, or what was said by Philip or by Thomas 
or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other 
of the Lord's disciples ; what Aristion and the Presbyter 
John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I imagined 
what was to be got from books was not so profitable to 
me as what came from the living and abiding voice. ' ' 
Now what are we to gather from these words ? Appar- 
ently this, that Papias was concerned to glean from a 
tradition now fast becoming a second-hand tradition 
any facts that he might pick up which related more es- 
pecially to the commandments, the teachings of Jesus. He 
is not interested in giving us an account of the Christian 
literature, and indeed he tells us that for this he does 
not very much care. It happens that he has heard the El- 
der tell how Matthew and Mark wrote their Gospels and 
he puts this down ; but it is quite incidental, and of the 
rest of the rich literature which existed in his day, ex- 
cept of the Apocalypse, he has nothing to sa}^. And, sup- 
posing that the Gospel were genuine, there would be a 



The Fourth Gospel. 1 2 5 

special reason why, when he spoke of Matthew and of 
Mark, he would not be likely to speak of the Fourth 
Gospel along with them. Papias is something of an 
antiquarian, who is getting together for his own 
generation the oral traditions of a preceding generation 
because the men of that generation are fast disappearing. 
Now was it necessary for this aim that he should tell 
anything about the Fourth Gospel ? Certainly it was 
not. If the Gospel was genuine it must have appeared 
within his own and other men's recollections. It 
would be nothing he had heard from the Elders but it 
would be a fact that was well known, and there would 
be no reason that would make it necessary for him to 
mention it. So that the fact that he did not mention it 
does not prove that he did not know it ; it simply 
proves nothing one way or the other. But may not 
Papias, if he did not speak of the Gospel directly, have 
quoted some sayings from it among his interpretations ? 
There is no evidence that he did this, but the fact that 
Eusebius does not mention any such quotations does 
not show conclusively that he may not have done it. 
Eusebius tells us that he means to trace ' ' what portions 
of the Antilegomena earlier writers had made use of, 
and what they said about the Homologoumena," that 
is, when he finds any quotations from the Antilegomena, 
the books which were disputed, he promises that he will 
let us know of them, but the Homologoumena, the books 
which every one accepts, he will only mention if he finds 
some definite statement about them. And the Fourth 
Gospel is one of the Homologoumena. So then our an- 
swer to the question whether Papias knew the Gospel 
must depend upon other data, if such data exist. Such 
data are very scanty, but so far as they go they tend to 
answer the question in the affirmative. If Papias does 



126 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

not mention the Gospel, we have the testimony of 
Eusebius that he did know the Epistle and that he 
drew proof texts from it. Of course one may say 
to this that Kusebius made a mistake and did not 
know what he was talking about, and this indeed 
some scholars have said. But such a denial has no 
evidence back of it, and it is all the more improba- 
ble as Polycarp has an undoubted quotation from the 
same Epistle, and Polycarp lived at the same time 
that Papias lived. And in addition to this is the 
fact that, according to all the testimony which we 
have, the heretics of the early part of the century, 
about the year 125, and in particular Valentinus and 
Basilides, who were noted heresiarchs, already accepted 
and made use of the book. Here again it is possible 
to throw doubt upon the testimony ; Tertullian and 
Hippolytus, we are told, the writers who give us an 
account of these early heretics, are very inexact in 
their statements, and when they tell us that Basilides 
or Valentinus held to this or that opinion we cannot 
be sure that they are not mixing up the systems of 
these early heresiarchs with those of their later fol- 
lowers, as they sometimes do mix them up. Perhaps 
we may not be sure about it, but we hardly are satisfied 
to reject this testimony altogether, and on the whole it 
seems more probable that in this case Tertullian and 
Hippolytus are not mixing up the systems of the early 
and of the later heretics, but are giving the real views 
of Basilides and of Valentinus. By the year 125 a.d. 
the Gospel was then probably in existence. It was not 
accepted at once, and even in the middle of the century 
its position was a little doubtful ; but with the excep- 
tion of one small sect there was no decided opposition 
made to it. It is true that if John had lived in Asia 



The Fourth Gospel. 1 2 7 

Minor, and if men were still alive who had known 
him, we should find some difficulty in accounting for 
the acceptance of the book ; but as it is the thing is 
inconceivable only when we carry back into the second 
century a critical spirit which is quite foreign to the 
times. The books of the New Testament were still 
far from being Scripture, and Papias prefers oral tra- 
dition to written records in whatever relates to Christ's 
teachings ; a book was valuable because it was edify- 
ing, and no one thought of scrutinizing carefully the 
evidence for its antiquity. Listen to the argument of 
Tertullian for the apocryphal Book of Enoch. "I 
suppose," he says, referring to those who did not 
accept the book, "they did not think that, having 
been published before the deluge, it could have safely 
survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher of all 
things. If that is the reason, let them recall to their 
memory that Noah, the survivor of the deluge, was 
the great-grandson of Enoch himself, and he of course 
had heard and remembered from domestic renown and 
hereditary tradition concerning his own great-grand- 
father's grace in the sight of God, and concerning all 
his preachings, since Enoch had given no other charge 
to Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowl- 
edge of them to his posterity. If Noah had not had 
this by so short a route, there would still be this con- 
sideration to warrant our assertion of the genuineness 
of this Scripture, he could equally have renewed it 
under the Spirit's inspiration, after it had been de- 
stroyed by the violence of the deluge." When rea- 
soning like this could satisfy one of the acutest men of 
his times, when men did not busy themselves with sug- 
gesting doubts, but only with getting rid of them if 
they were too obvious, we see how impossible it is to 



1 28 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

make the acceptance of a book like the Fourth Gospel 
appear incomprehensible. The very audacity of the 
book, the audacity of a work of genius, and the har- 
mony in which it stood with the best tendencies of the 
age, which it carried out and completed, would make 
it successful where a lesser book might have failed. 

But still we have the question to answer, who after 
all was the author of the book, if the author was not 
John ? is it not indeed possible at least to give some 
share of the book to the Apostle, to carry it back to 
him at any rate in part ? This is what Mr. Arnold has 
tried to do, and he has found in the book traces of the 
hand of one of John's disciples, who had put together 
after his own fashion what he had heard from his 
master, and had published it with the approval of the 
church at Ephesus ; upon the Tubingen professors, 
who have discovered in the book a profound art, Mr. 
Arnold is very severe. But such a theory as this, 
apart from the criticism upon the vigorous and rig- 
orous German theories, has too many serious difficul- 
ties in its way, which Mr. Arnold has passed somewhat 
lightly over ; for one thing it does not tell us where 
the greater part of the matter came from. The whole 
conception of Jesus which dominates the Gospel, the 
whole historical framework, the composition of the 
speeches outside of isolated logia, long narratives which 
contain miracles or which for other reasons we find it 
difficult to accept, — all this, on Mr. Arnold's theory, we 
must give to the author and not to the Apostle. Mr. 
Arnold seems indeed not wholly to have overlooked 
the difficulty, but the way in which he gets rid of it 
one might wish had been a little clearer. He does say, 
it is true, that the narrative ' ' might well be thought, 
not indeed invented, but a matter of infinitely little 



The Fourth Gospel. 129 

care and attention to the writer, ' ' but this is so vague 
an answer that we hardly can accept it as an answer at 
all. What Mr. Arnold means we perhaps may guess 
from the way in which he explains Bethany beyond 
Jordan. "The author's Palestinian geography was 
so vague, ' ' he says, ' ' that when he wants a name for 
a locality he takes the first village that comes into 
his remembrance, without troubling himself to think 
whether it suits or no," — a way of going to work 
which it is not altogether easy for a plain reader to 
distinguish from invention. And as for the narrative 
being a matter of infinitely little care to the writer, 
surely here Mr. Arnold is mistaken. For when a 
writer devotes fully half his book to narrative, when 
he is all the time giving notices of time and place, 
and when he closes with an account of the Pas- 
sion which is fuller than that which the older tradi- 
tion has given, this cannot be all a matter of infinitely 
little care to him. And to suppose, as Mr. Arnold 
supposes, that the Elders of Ephesus should have 
added their testimony that it was the Apostle who had 
"written these things," is, even upon Mr. Arnold's 
own showing, somewhat absurd. 

But what must decide the question for us is the fact 
that whoever the author may be, he certainly intends to 
speak in the person of the Apostle John. It is true 
indeed that this fact has been disputed, and so we shall 
have to examine it somewhat more closely. As we 
read the book, we every now and then find ourselves 
meeting with a certain disciple who, it is clear, stands 
in some peculiar relation to the work. He is spoken 
of for the most part as the disciple whom Jesus loved, 
and he is never named any more definitely than this. 
This disciple leans on Jesus' breast at supper, and asks 



1 30 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

the name of the traitor ; he admits Peter to the palace 
of the high-priest ; he stands by the cross and receives 
Jesus' dying message ; he runs with Peter to the empty 
tomb. He clearly is the unnamed disciple of the Baptist 
who hears him speak and follows Jesus. And as the 
narrative has just left him at the cross, without doubt 
it is to him that appeal is made as a witness to the 
flowing of blood and water from Jesus' side : ' ' He 
that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is 
true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also 
may believe. ' ' Who then are we to understand that the 
disciple is ? Naturally we should look for him among 
the three disciples who were most intimate with Jesus. 
Now Peter is repeatedly mentioned along with him, 
and James was early put to death, so that we have 
only John who is left. And as John is never named 
in the Gospel, and it is not likely that he would have 
been passed over without being spoken of at all, we 
can hardly refuse to see him in the disciple whom 
Jesus loved. John, then, is the beloved disciple, and 
from the way in which he is mentioned we are com- 
pelled to draw the inference that he stands in some 
peculiar relation to the work, either that he is the au- 
thor who is referring to himself in this indirect way, 
or that he is the source of the statements which the 
author makes. Now which are we to suppose that he 
really is, the author, or the source of the author's 
knowledge ? 

Dr. Cone, in his chapter on the Fourth Gospel, has 
no doubt that he is the source of the author's knowl- 
edge, and that the language plainly shows that this is 
so. ' ' For, ' ' he says, ' ' certainly the only natural 
explanation of the passage" — he is speaking of the 
passage which has already been quoted, — " certainly 



The Fourth Gospel. 131 

the only natural explanation of the passage is that the 
author refers in it to one who has already borne testi- 
mony which he uses and wishes to assure the reader 
to be trustworthy. An author writing of himself could 
neither say 'that one,' nor 'hath borne witness.'" 
Could not say it ? Well, we turn to the ninth chapter 
of the Gospel and we find that our author has put these 
words into Jesus' mouth : " Thou hast both seen him, 
and that one it is (eusivos) who speaketh with thee." 
Then let us turn to the first chapter, to the thirty- 
fourth verse, and there again we shall find these words : 
' ' I have seen and have borne witness that this is the 
Son of God. " It is the Baptist who is speaking, and 
the witness he refers to is that which he is just then 
bearing, a case which we see is perfectly parallel to 
our passage. So that it is not impossible after all ; 
and indeed if the author is all the while speaking in 
the third person, as certainly he has a right to do if he 
chooses, it is the very thing that we should expect. 
And on the other side, if the author is referring to 
another person, what can be the meaning of that clause 
1 ' he knoweth that he saith true ' ' ? The Apostle is 
dead now, we remember ; and how indeed could any 
one appeal at all to another person's consciousness of 
truth? to his truth, perhaps, but not to his conscious- 
ness of truth. And then, too, the very indefinite allu- 
sion, "he who hath seen," and the fact that the writer 
never names this authority of his, how are we to 
explain this ? A person who is writing of himself it 
suits well enough, but it does not suit at all the tone 
of a disciple who is speaking of his master and of the 
source from which he gets his facts. Such a reserve is 
quite out of place ; rather should we expect him to tell 
us very plainly of it, and to make much of the fact 



132 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

that he has no less authority than that of John behind 
him. 

And that we have found the true explanation is 
shown very distinctly in the last chapter, where a cer- 
tain person or persons distinguish themselves from the 
disciple whom Jesus loved, and name him as the 
author of the book. Now this certainly appears to 
make a distinction between the last chapter and the 
rest of the book, and such a distinction we think is 
quite unquestionable. At the end of chapter twenty 
the book evidently comes to a close, and while before 
this every thing has apparently been written in the 
character of an eye-witness, in the appendix this is 
suddenly dropped. Besides the verse which expressly 
distinguishes the writer from the disciple who wrote 
the rest of the book, we find such an expression as 
1 ' the sons of Zebedee, ' ' and in the twentieth verse we 
have a reference to the beloved disciple which is so 
clearly objective that we can hardly think it is meant 
to be understood as coming from a writer who is speak- 
ing of himself. So that very many critics have come 
to the conclusion that the last chapter was written by 
another person. Their confidence, however, we do not 
find ourselves able to share. The book never appears 
without this last chapter, so that at least it must have 
been added very early ; and in st}4e the chapter agrees 
with the rest of the Gospel in a very minute wa3^. We 
think that the critics have been too ready to suppose 
the existence of a writer who could imitate at once the 
conceptions and the style of the Gospel so cleverly, 
especially as his object in doing this is by no means 
clear. So that we think it much more probable that 
we have to do with the same writer who, after speaking 
throughout the book in the character of the disciple, 



The Fourth Gospel. 133 

now drops the character which he has assumed, and 
speaks for himself. And the reason for his doing this, 
if what we have discovered about the Gospel be true, is 
not far to seek. Just who the author was it is not likely 
that we shall ever know. We think it is probable that 
the three Epistles were written by him, the first Epistle 
certainly, and, as it seems, the other Epistles also, for 
as forgeries we do not see just what object they could 
have attained. In this case then, the author probably 
was a presbyter in one of the cities of Asia Minor, but 
at any rate he was a man who had reached a new 
conception of Christianity, a philosophy of religion, 
which, as Jesus stood at the centre of it, he wished to 
carry out in a representation of Jesus' life ; and in ac- 
cordance with a very common literary custom he deter- 
mined that it should be written in the person of one 
who actually had lived in Jesus' time, and who should 
stand for the religious conception which he had to 
represent. It was natural that he should choose one 
of the three disciples who were especially close to Jesus ; 
but James had early been put to death, and Peter had 
come to stand so definitely for Judaic Christianity, the 
Gospel of the Circumcision, that he could not very well 
be made to represent a Gospel which was purely spirit- 
ual and universal. So that John alone was left, and 
him the author chose. But while John certainly is 
meant by the beloved disciple, yet it is true also that 
he appears rather as an ideal figure, as a representation 
of the spiritual Christianity of the Gospel, than as the 
actual, the personal John. It is only in this way that 
we can explain why his personal name never is applied 
to him, and why Jesus' especial love for him is so often 
insisted on. And this also explains the very peculiar 
relation in which John stands to Peter — Peter, who 



134 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

represented Judaic Christianity. In the early Gos- 
pels it is Peter who without question stands first among 
the disciples, but in the Fourth Gospel this is com- 
pletely reversed, and reversed in such a significant way 
that we scarcely can refuse to see it. It is John, not 
Peter, who is called first ; he leans on Jesus' breast at 
supper and acts as a mediator between Peter and the 
Lord ; at the betrayal he follows Jesus boldly where 
Peter follows with trembling, and it is through him 
that Peter enters the palace. He alone stands by the 
cross and receives the Lord's mother into his charge ; 
he outruns Peter in coming to the tomb. Now as his- 
tory this is all very doubtful, for to take only the part 
which John plays at the crucifixion, the older accounts 
make it clear that the disciples forsook Jesus at the 
betrayal, and that only Peter ventured to follow timidly 
at a distance. But here John, to say nothing of the 
difficulty of his being known to the high-priest, appears 
with no trace of fear, and apparently is present 
throughout the whole proceedings. The older Gospels 
again exclude the presence of any of the diciples at 
the cross, and only speak of a few women afar off ; but 
here John remains at the very foot of the cross till the 
end comes, a thing which we must think is quite im- 
possible. In all this there is no hostility to Peter, but 
still he must everywhere be second, he must, so we 
cannot help thinking, give place to the purer Chris- 
tianity which John represents. And the appendix in 
our view is no after- thought, but the author's state- 
ment of this, it is the carrying out of the allegory 
which appears throughout the book. To Peter the 
Lord restores his favor, he entrusts him with the care 
of his sheep ; but then he predicts to him his death. 
And Peter, turning to the beloved disciple, asks, 



The Fourth Gospel. 135 

4 'Lord, and what shall this man do?" And Jesus 
answers : " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
that to thee? follow thou me." Jewish Christianity, 
material and partial, has its work to do, but it is to pass 
away ; the higher, the spiritual Christianity is to en- 
dure till Christ himself shall come. Does any one think 
that this is forced, that it is a play of fancy ? But we 
have failed entirely if we have not shown that through- 
out the book there is much which has no explanation 
unless it is explained in just such a way as this. And 
right at this crowning point the author gives us a hint 
of his purpose : ' ' Yet Jesus said riot unto him, ' He 
shall not die,' but, 'If I will that he tarry till I 
come, what is that to thee ? ' " ; what does this mean if 
it is not to warn the reader that there is something 
behind the natural meaning of the words, something 
which will give him the key for understanding them ? 
Such allegory may seem strange to us now, but it was 
not strange to men of the second century, and certainly 
it was not strange to a writer who, sending a friendly 
letter to a neighboring church, addresses the church as 
" Lady," and keeps up the figure to the end. 

This then we must recognize if we are to understand 
the book : that the history, the facts, are not facts at all, 
but only an outward dress, a picture of the ideas which 
the author wishes us to see beneath them. The author 
does not mean them to be accepted as facts, and the 
very boldness of his attempt shows his ingenuousness ; 
a man who had gone to work cunningly with an inten- 
tion to deceive, would have kept much more closely 
to the ordinary tradition, for it would have occurred to 
him that he must not depart too far from the regular road, 
that he must make his work not too difficult to accept. 
To call the book a forgery is to lose all sight of the 



136 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

different point of view from which men once looked at 
the matter, and to forget that it was then a perfectly 
legitimate device ; in reality it corresponds more nearly 
to a modern work of fiction. At this very period we 
have traces of a number of books in which, under the 
name of some famous man, often under the name of an 
Apostle, an author presented his opinions, and which no 
one would think of calling dishonest ; and of these our 
Gospel is only one. But among these it stands alone 
as a work of the highest genius. As history it has 
no value, but as the highest expression of religious 
philosophy which Christianity produced, it will always 
remain, as IyUther called it, " the only tender, true 
chief-Gospel." The form in which its philosophy is 
expressed we may sometimes have to discard, but 
the substance remains untouched. The thought of 
Jesus as a revelation of God in man, the absolute free- 
dom of worship, the dominion of truth, eternal life as 
something which is essentially spiritual, a present pos- 
session which consists in perfect communion with God, 
— this and more besides has become our permanent 
inheritance, and to the Fourth Gospel we owe it most 
of all. 



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CHAPTER III. 

THE CREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPELS. 

BEFORE entering upon any positive sketch of Jesus' 
life and teaching, it will simplify the problem 
materially if we can come in some approximate 
degree at an estimate of the amount of historical credi- 
bility which is to be assigned to the Gospel narratives, 
and so can get some standard which may be applied to 
the more doubtful cases. It may be said that this is 
precisely the object of the whole investigation, and can 
only come as a result at the end, after all the facts have 
been examined ; and up to a certain extent this is true. 
But against such a method, if followed out strictly, 
there is this objection, that the reader quickly gets 
involved in a tangle of conflicting probabilities and 
provisional results, and becomes so bewildered in try- 
ing to extricate himself that he loses sight of his path, 
and has at the end only a confused notion of the ground 
over which he has been travelling. It ought to be 
possible, by selecting out the cases which are the clear- 
est, to obtain an answer to the question in a general 
way, and so to clear up in some measure the road to a 
positive reconstruction. Moreover, in the present case 
this becomes a necessity in view of the fact that we 
have the question of miracles to settle, and this is a 

137 



138 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

question of so peculiar a nature that it can best be 
disposed of by itself. We shall therefore first discuss 
the question of the miraculous, in its bearing upon the 
historicity of the Gospels, and then shall try to find 
some general criterion as to the trustworthiness of 
each individual book which has come down to us. 

In starting once again on the question of miracles, 
one cannot help a disheartened feeling that probably 
nothing which he shall say will have the least effect 
upon those who do not already agree with him. 
Nevertheless, some of the unsatisfactoriness which is in- 
cident to such discussions may perhaps be eliminated by 
defining carefully the grounds on which it is proposed to 
argue. In the present case these will be historical 
grounds simply, and all purely philosophical consider- 
ations, just so far as one can help making use of those 
principles which lie at the bottom of his mental make- 
up, and form the medium which inevitably tinges his 
view of things, will be ruled out. This is not saying 
that philosophical arguments deserve to have no weight, 
for it is not reasonable to ask a man to accept, without 
special evidence, that which goes flat against the best 
conceptions he has been able to form of the universe. 
But if such arguments are to have any practical effect 
in convincing others, one will first have to prove that 
his philosophy is right, and that in itself is liable to be 
a matter of difficulty. And besides there is some justi- 
fication for the distrust with which in general purely 
philosophical considerations are apt to be viewed, for 
after all the universe is a very vast and a very complex 
thing, and when the philosopher undertakes to prove 
that this or that event cannot occur, the possibility 
that there is something which he has failed to take 
into his account is so great, that no one, except per- 



The Credibility of tJie Gospels. 139 

haps the philosopher himself, is quite ready to look 
upon the matter as settled. We therefore shall con- 
sider that we are spared in our character as historian 
the somewhat tedious task of trying to show that a 
miracle is an impossibility or a philosophical absurdity, 
and shall make no assumption whatever about the 
matter. And this may be supposed to give us the 
privilege of passing by as well those arguments on 
the other side, which have attempted to show that a 
miraculous revelation is just the sort of thing we ought 
to look for. The two may be considered to balance 
each other. 

But in refusing to assert that miracles are impossible, 
it is not of course intended to say that they have lost 
any of their inherent improbability, though many seem 
to imagine that this step is an easy one, and to con- 
sider that after they have shown that the possibility 
of a miracle is not absolutely excluded, the bulk of 
their work has been done. But this shows an entire 
failure to appreciate the nature of the problem. The 
strength of the case against miracles lies first of all 
in the historical argument against them, and this 
must have a preponderant influence. Now as a matter 
of fact, leaving out this single period which is in dis- 
pute, — for the Old Testament miracles are the weakest 
of broken reeds, and can only be bolstered up by the 
very strongest evidence from the New, — we know that 
events in nature have come about according to definite 
and unvarying laws, and that miracles have not hap- 
pened. But — and this is the real point of the matter — 
miracle- stories are the commonest things in the world, 
and have sprung up in the greatest profusion in every 
age, not excluding the present one. There is therefore 
against the miracle-stories which are recorded in the 



1 40 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Gospels the overwhelming presumption which is af- 
forded by these two facts, that events of such a nature 
as those which the Gospels relate are absolutely un- 
known, whereas the collections of miracle-stories which 
exist are indefinite in number, and in every other case 
they are demonstrated to be baseless. Accordingly, 
there is an immense presumption that in this case, too, 
the phenomena are not to be explained in some new 
and strange way, but just as the same phenomena have 
been explained before. It is not necessary to say with 
Hume that this presumption is absolutely conclusive. 
Suppose that miracles actually have happened, and 
there is nothing in it to render impossible a proof of 
their occurrence which to all practical intents shall be 
a satisfactory one. If it could be shown conclusively 
that the writings which described these miracles came 
from the hand of eye-witnesses, or else from their im- 
mediate hearers, if the good faith of all the parties 
concerned could be made morally certain, if the mir- 
acles were of such a character that they could not be 
attributed without the greatest forcing to a blunder or 
mistake, and if there was nothing in the rest of the 
history or the literature of that time to contradict or 
throw doubt upon their testimony — all of which is con- 
ceivable enough, — it hardly would be fair to make any 
further demands. To put the case more concretely, if 
our four Gospels could be shown to have proceeded from 
the men whose names they bear, with as much probabil- 
ity as it can be shown that the Epistle to the Romans 
comes from Paul, there would be little more to say. 
But again it must be insisted that such a hypothetical 
case destroys none of the antecedent improbability 
of miracles, and that they are to be treated with the 
utmost rigor and suspicion. And in this respect the 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 141 



Gospel miracles do not have the slightest advantage 
over their fellows. Such a claim is sometimes made 
for them, based chiefly upon the unique character 
and personality of Jesus, and to this extent it may be 
conceded that the claim has an element of truth in it, 
that if on independent grounds the truth of the mir- 
acles can be sustained, then the uniqueness of Jesus 
will go a little way to make them more conceivable. 
But in so far as it is intended by this to weaken the 
antecedent suspicion with which miracles are to be re- 
garded, and to deprecate the most searching criticism 
of them, the plea is entirely without force. The 
uniqueness of Jesus does not make it unlikely that 
miracle- stories should have grown up about him, nor 
does it make it probable that he will really work mir- 
acles himself, simply because spiritual greatness has 
no sort of connection with miracles at all. One might 
argue much more forcibly on the other side that 
miracles, which in every other case are a proof of super- 
stition and of error, are the very last things by which 
we should expect Jesus to attest his greatness and his 
truth. What the defenders of the miracles are called 
upon to prove is, not that they are connected with the 
person of Jesus, but that in themselves they are quite 
different from other miracles ; and as this is just the 
question at issue, it can have no influence with us at the 
start. It is true that upon the whole the Gospel miracles 
are more sober than those of other great cycles of miracle- 
stories ; but that is not a matter of any special moment. 
Nor do vague impressions of the truthfulness and 
historical character of the narratives count for any- 
thing, for of course those things will have the flavor 
of reality to us which we have always been accustomed 
to believe were true. What we are bound to do is 



142 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

to rid ourselves as much as possible of the glamour 
which the sacredness of the story has cast about it, and 
then subject the story to precisely the same tests 
which we are accustomed to use elsewhere. If the 
story will not stand these tests, with what face can we 
blame people if they do not accept the story as true. 
The great fault of Christian Apologists lies just here, 
that they have been too indulgent to the Gospels, that 
they have refused to treat them rigorously, and they 
practically have asked us to approach the miraculous as 
a perfectly open question, to be decided upon the same 
degree of evidence which would satisfy us in the case 
of a natural event. But of course this cannot be ad- 
mitted for a moment. To be sure we come to the 
miracles with a prejudice against them, and any one 
who comes in a different way is totally unfit to reason 
on the question. Accordingly, we shall assume they 
are not true till we find the very strongest evidence for 
changing our opinion ; we shall search for errors and 
contradictions ; between two divergent accounts, the 
one which has least of the miraculous in it will be 
unhesitatingly preferred if other things are equal ; the 
ability to show how a miracle might have arisen will 
be considered as sufficient proof against it. Instead of 
confining ourselves to the cases for which the most can 
be said, and slurring over those which are most sus- 
picious, and bear more clearly the marks of legend, 
we shall consider that the latter are particularly sig- 
nificant in their bearing, and that instead of being 
buoyed up by the others they tend to drag the others 
down with them. Hypotheses for harmonizing the 
discrepancies which occur in parallel accounts we 
shall not regard as needing refutation, because the 
problem is not to show that the different versions may 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 143 

be reconciled, but that the presumption against the story 
itself can be removed, and its falsity shown to be out 
of the question. We shall not deem it necessary to 
account definitely for each individual miracle, or to 
point out just the logical process by which each detail 
arose, because logic is the last thing to be expected, 
and because it is the very nature of the growth of 
miracle-stories to be irresponsible and incalculable. 
This is simply what we do in other cases. There are 
many other miracles for which the external evidence 
is strong to a surprising degree, and yet we do not 
hesitate in the least to set conjecture over against the 
clearest testimony, and to reject the testimony at once. 
It is just in this that a miracle differs from a natural 
event ; we do not balance the evidence, but so long as 
there is a possibility that a mistake has been made, we 
accept that possibility as established. If any one 
objects to this way of proceeding, we really do not 
know what to say to him. He is asking us to slay 
the miracles after taking every weapon out of our 
hands. 

Now to begin with, the existence of miracle-stories 
in the early Christian communities does not furnish 
the least difficulty, but it would have been a most 
surprising thing if legend had not been actively 
at work. Every condition was present in an unusual 
degree, ignorance, an unwavering belief in the possi- 
bility of the miraculous, an intense religious excite- 
ment ; and at other times these conditions have given 
rise to just the sort of phenomena which we find in the 
age of the Apostles. And right here one great objec- 
tion to the miracles lies. If it were only in the life of 
Jesus that we found them, then we could at least see 
some principle to account for them ; but when we find 



1 44 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

that the Apostles too worked miracles, and that many of 
the other Christians were credited with the same power, 
when we see the miraculous stretched out through 
several centuries, and only dying gradually away, do 
we not see that this has all the marks of a natural 
phenomenon and not of a divine revelation ? There is 
the case of the Apostle Paul, the clearest and the most 
unequivocal of any in the New Testament ; Paul be- 
lieves that the men about him have the power of work- 
ing miracles, and he believes that he, himself, has 
worked them, — could there be any more definite testi- 
mony than this? But St. Bernard also believed that 
he had worked miracles, and it surely cannot satisfy 
us to say that Bernard must have been mistaken, and 
that Paul must have been right. It is just for this 
that there is no proof whatever. Paul had no better 
knowledge than his age had, and he was as likely as 
any one to account for a surprising event, of which he 
did not understand the cause, as a work of divine 
power. We have a clear evidence of this in a case 
which is very similar to the case of miracles, the 
so-called gift of tongues. There can hardly be any 
doubt that this gift, which Paul describes in his letter 
to the Corinthians, was only a form of strong religious 
excitement, which we cannot call inspired unless we 
are willing to give the same name to the similar out- 
breaks among modern sects, an excitement, moreover, 
that was capable of leading to great abuses. But 
Paul, while with much good sense he rebukes these 
excesses, and will not allow that the gift stands very 
high in the scale, yet has no doubt that it is of divine 
origin, and that it enables the disciple " in the spirit to 
speak mysteries." 

In such an age, therefore, we should look for miracle- 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 145 

stories, even if we had to do with actual eye-witnesses ; 
and yet in this case the chance for mistake would be 
very much lessened, and we should expect to be able, 
with some probability, to sift out what actually had 
happened. But Paul, who speaks of his own miracles, 
fails to give us any concrete instance of them, while 
the writers on whom we must depend for our examples, 
not only cannot be proved to have been eye-witnesses, 
but most probably had some of them never seen an eye- 
witness ; so that the chances for error become almost 
infinite. To make one who does not wish it see that 
in the Gospels there are clear traces of legend, which 
we can even watch in its growth, we fear is hardly pos- 
sible, for we know how strong a hold the Gospel narra- 
tives have over men ; but we think that without any 
doubt the evidence is there. Not to start in with the 
Gospels themselves, there is a very good example con- 
nected with the phenomenon which has just been 
mentioned, the gift of tongues. The author of the 
Acts has at the beginning of his book an incident 
which took place on the day of Pentecost, and there 
can be no reasonable doubt that the phenomenon is the 
same as that which is described by Paul. But how 
does the author understand it ? Why, he thinks that 
it is nothing else than a speaking in foreign languages ; 
he makes a miracle out of what we have the clearest 
proof was something very different. Commentators 
have tried in the most artificial of ways to avoid this 
conclusion, and we believe have charged it to the arbi- 
trariness of rationalistic criticism ; but this always has 
been upon the assumption that the account is thor- 
oughly reliable, and that a mistake is the last thing 
to be admitted. If we once will admit that a miracle 
in itself is suspicious, we shall wonder how any other 



1 46 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

explanation could ever have been thought of, when so 
simple a one lay at hand. Now this same thing can 
be traced in the Gospels as well, a tradition which is 
constantly growing more and more legendary by a 
process which we often can detect taking place under 
our very eyes. It is no accident that the stories which 
are peculiar to Matthew, the stories of Jesus' infancy, 
the miracle of the coin in the fish's mouth, the walking 
of Peter on the water, and the resurrection of the saints 
at the death of Jesus, belong to the latest stratum of 
the Gospel literature ; and they are no whit harder to 
account for than a host of legends about saints and 
martyrs. How natural it would be to collect wonders 
about as stupendous an event as Jesus' death ; how 
natural, too, still to keep the risen saints in the grave, 
that they should not anticipate Jesus' resurrection ! 
The story of Peter's walking on the water, a trans- 
parent allegory of the Apostle's fickleness, is especially 
instructive, for not only by its connection with the 
walking of Jesus on the sea does it reveal the source 
from which its form was derived, but we also have 
this story about Jesus in an earlier Gospel, which evi- 
dently is quite ignorant of Peter's experience. And 
this story, too, about Jesus, as appears from the way in 
which he stills the tempest, we probably can trace to 
a simpler story which was present in a still earlier Gos- 
pel, where Jesus is only represented as calming the 
storm. 

And in Luke's Gospel the same process is plainly 
visible. A comparison of Luke with Mark, in the inci- 
dent of the high priest's servant, will give an illustra- 
tion of the way in which the determined miracle- 
monger can make use of the merest hint. Tradition 
had told how one of Jesus' captors had lost an ear 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 147 

through the zeal of a certain disciple. But this is too 
good an opportunity for a miracle to be lost, and so in 
Luke we find that the ear has been healed by a touch 
from Jesus' hand. How arbitrary the favorite device 
is of supposing that the absence of an incident in the 
earlier accounts is simply a failure to tell the whole 
story appears in this case, for it is incredible, if a mir- 
acle really had occurred, that the earlier narratives 
should just have given the unimportant introduction to 
it, and have omitted the miracle itself, for which the 
incident would be remembered. It is as if one should 
recall the rising of the curtain, but forget that the play 
had followed. Jesus had the power to heal the ear, — 
such the reasoning seems to have been, — and, there- 
fore, the ear was healed. Similarly in the story of the 
Resurrection, while the rest of the accounts are con- 
tent to say that the stone was rolled away, Matthew 
knows just how the whole thing happened, and brings 
the women on the scene to witness the event. Of 
course, the writers imagine that they are giving the 
real facts of the case, and the freedom of their con- 
jectures might readily be paralleled among the Rabbis 
or the Fathers, or among modern scholars even ; but, 
nevertheless, we must recognize what a wide field it 
gives for error and mistake. The miraculous draft of 
fishes, which is given in Luke, is another case in 
point ; how can we fail to see on what a slender 
thread the whole thing hangs, when we find that there 
is an earlier account of the very same incident, in 
which the miracle is not so much as hinted at ? With 
a miracle to start with, how could the very fact of its 
occurrence have dropped out of sight, when the inci- 
dent was told ? And in a similar way, in the account 
of a visit to Nazareth, we find that Luke has brought 



1 48 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

in a miraculous escape on Jesus' part which Mark 
knows nothing of. 

If we recognize then that legend has been at work, 
we see how irresistibly it will burst through all the 
limits we may try to set to it, and how difficult it will 
be to save a part of the miraculous at the expense 
of the rest. As we said before, we shall not undertake 
to account perfectly for every story, and very likely 
there are some whose special motive it is no longer 
possible to discover. But there are others again which 
can be explained with perfect confidence. The rending 
of the Temple vail, for example, is clearly only the 
materialization of a doctrinal truth, a metaphor turned 
into actual fact ; and the story of the ten lepers, to say 
nothing of the unlikelihood that Jesus should have 
healed men like this in batches, is little more than an 
allegory in disguise. These examples will suggest one 
set of influences which would be at work to produce 
miracle-stories, — doctrinal views, that is, about Jesus 
and his work, and especially such views as became in 
later years a centre of controversy ; although we are 
not disposed to give a very prominent place to this. 
Then there would be the fruitful influence of the Old 
Testament, which Strauss laid so much stress on, and 
which we cannot doubt was active from the first. 
Among men to whom it was self-evident that the Old 
Testament was filled with types and prophecies of the 
Messiah, the tendency was irresistible to find these 
types fulfilled in Jesus' life, and to them an Old Testa- 
ment quotation would be as clear a proof as one could 
wish for. One evident example of this we have in the 
account of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where the first 
Kvangelist has two animals in place of the single one 
of the older account ; and the proof he gives for his 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 49 

change is simply a passage from Isaiah, ' ' Behold, thy 
king cometh, sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal 
of an ass." This example is the more striking because 
it all comes from a mistaken interpretation, and a fail- 
ure to notice the parallelism in the Old Testament 
account. Of course it would not be difficult to put 
too much stress upon the influence which was exerted 
by the Old Testament, and in no case ought it to be 
divorced from the all-pervasive craving after miracles. 
One certainly is not to think of a conscious feeling of 
the need of supplying parallels in Jesus' life, without 
which there would have been no tendency to legend at 
all. A well-defined feeling of this sort does not appear 
to have existed, for it is rarely that we find, what in 
such a case we might look to find, stories which mani- 
festly are copies throughout. But with a tendency to 
legend once given, and sure to make itself felt in one 
form or another, the influence of the Old Testament 
would go a long way to determine what that form 
should be, and besides would give an immense impetus 
to the whole movement, by furnishing ready to hand a 
great mass of material in every way suited to the pur- 
pose, and everywhere familiar, particularly if theologi- 
cal and controversial interests stood ready to give each 
newly discovered point of contact a warm welcome, and 
find for it general acceptance. Furthermore, there is 
the possibility that a saying or a parable may have 
grown into a narrative of a real event, and this seems 
in part to be the explanation of the cursing of the fig- 
tree. This story is not creditable to Jesus, and one 
might wish to get rid of it even apart from the miracle. 
There seems to be no good reason for thinking, as some 
have done, that Jesus meant this act just to give his 
disciples a striking object-lesson, with the Jewish na- 



1 50 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

tion as its text. The account itself hardly would sug- 
gest this, but rather would suggest that it was regarded 
as an illustration of the power which faith puts in the 
hands of the believer, for this is all that Jesus has to 
say in explanation of it. So then, when we find that 
these words which are given to Jesus really were spoken 
on another occasion, 1 and when we find that a parable 
actually has come down to us about a barren fig-tree 
which was threatened with condign punishment, it 
hardly seems necessary to hunt any further for an ex- 
planation of the story. These three tendencies at least 
we may constantly be on the lookout for, but besides 
these there would be numberless other ways in which a 
miracle-story might be suggested. It would be hope- 
less at the present day to expect to find in every case 
just what the starting-point for the story was, but it 
often can be suggested with a good deal of probability. 
The story of the miraculous feeding may be taken as 
an example. So far as external authority goes this is 
the best attested miracle to be found in the Gospels. 
Each of the four Evangelists has his version of it, and 
indeed two of them have given us a double version, 
though that perhaps is hardly to be reckoned a point 
in its favor. But unless one stands ready to stick by 
the miraculous through thick and thin, there are pe- 
culiar difficulties about this story which make it very 
hard to accept on any testimony. Without insisting 
on the fact that there really is no adequate occasion for 
so stupendous an event, our narrative brings out clearly 
a difficulty, which often is suffered to drop out of view 
by reason of the dim religious light in which the mira- 
cles are kept enveloped, but which the mind inevitably 
feels when it tries to picture to itself a miracle as actu- 

1 See Luke, 17 : 6. 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 5 1 

ally taking place. For this reason the healing-miracles 
are somewhat less difficult to believe in, because there 
the process is a hidden one and does not appear to call 
for a very close scrutiny ; but in the nature-miracles it 
is otherwise. It is a very different thing to say in 
general terms that God has omnipotent power, and 
actually to think of a loaf which has been broken 
suddenly become whole again, or of a new loaf in- 
stantly appearing when one has been picked up. The 
whole thing has an air of magic about it, of legerde- 
main ; it is what we expect to see at a conjuror's enter- 
tainment, and instinctively we shrink from connecting 
it with Jesus. In this story too there are points of 
contact with the Old Testament, but perhaps the real 
clue to the narrative is supplied by the Fourth Evan- 
gelist, when he connects it with a discourse which 
points to the Lord's Supper. Jesus sitting at the head 
of the table, blessing the food and distributing it to his 
followers, it is very likely that we have here a reflection 
of the simple love-feast of later days carried back into 
the legendary atmosphere of Jesus' own life. 

So far no mention has been made of a theory which 
in the past has had a great place in the criticism of 
the miracles, and which must always be recognized as 
at least a possibility. After the suspicion once gains 
ground that miracles are of doubtful credibility, the 
most natural step, because the shortest, is to assume 
that some real historical event lies at the bottom of 
each story, but has been given a wrong twist through 
misunderstandings on the part of eye-witness or narra- 
tor. But the absurdities into which the old rational- 
istic criticism fell in trying to carry out this method, 
furnish a sharp admonition that the method is at any 
rate to be employed with the utmost caution. There 



152 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 

are decided difficulties in the way of such a theory. If 
it is to be carried out with any plausibility a good share 
of the blame has to be laid upon the eye-witnesses 
themselves ; and the existence of so many events in 
Jesus' life which would lend themselves so easily to a 
mistake, together with the negligence of Jesus in cor- 
recting these mistakes, and the very considerable degree 
of stupidity on the part of the spectators, is in itself 
extremely odd. But in the case of one particular class 
of events, the miracles of healing, it might seem that 
the theory stood a good show of being carried out with 
success, and it will be necessary to examine these with 
some detail. 

There is in all three of the Gospels the account of an 
argument which Jesus had with the Pharisees about a 
demoniac whom Jesus had cured. The man is called 
a dumb demoniac in the older account, and there is 
nothing very improbable in this, though the fact that 
in Matthew the dumb man has become blind as well, 
ought to suggest caution about relying too implicitly 
upon details. However, the main point is that a re- 
markable cure had been effected in a way that was open 
and undeniable, and this much must be regarded as 
beyond reasonable doubt. And it is to be noticed in 
passing that just here, when for the first time we get 
on firm ground, the miraculous appears in a particu- 
larly dubious light. This matter of possession fur- 
nishes a striking example of the disturbing influence 
which a wrong point of view to start with may exert. 
If the upholder of the miracles would try seriously to 
realize the impression which a case of this sort must 
make upon a mind not already prejudiced in favor of 
the miraculous, he perhaps would be more ready to 
admit some reason for his opponent's scepticism. For 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 153 

his own part he has convinced himself already, and he 
can afford to pass somewhat lightly over what makes 
against him ; but if one has not as yet reached this 
position, the case against the influence of demons in 
disease seems as complete as one could reasonably ask 
for. The phenomena known as possession by no 
means appear for the first time with Jesus. The belief 
was already current among the Jews when Jesus was 
born, and it is continually being met with among other 
nations before and since. This very passage shows 
that Jewish exorcists sometimes were successful in 
their treatment of such cases ; and in the days of the 
Fathers, as well as in later times, there are well au- 
thenticated instances in which cures were effected by 
means which were looked upon as miraculous. Ac- 
cordingly, if we are to maintain our view that Jesus' 
cure was a miracle, and the actual casting out of a 
demon, we either must suppose that of two cases, not 
outwardly different, the one is a miracle and the other 
is a natural event, which is not very convincing ; or 
we must say that the others too were miracles, and that 
the Jews before Jesus' time were divinely guided to a 
correct diagnosis in this special class of diseases, and 
this is quite as unsatisfactory. Moreover, phenomena 
of the same sort occur at the present day, and have 
been shown beyond any doubt to come from natural 
causes. The whole attempt to save the credit of the 
Evangelists is artificial, and does not deserve considera- 
tion in view of the perfectly obvious explanation that 
the Evangelists simply were accepting the erroneous 
belief of their day, as of course it was to be expected 
they would do. But what we are concerned about 
more particularly is the explanation which Jesus him- 
self gives to this cure, ''If I by the power of God 



154 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

cast out demons, then doubtless the kingdom of God 
is come nigh unto you." Now in just this case such 
a saying was true in a special manner. Most of the 
diseases which were classed under possession were very 
larger of a mental nature, and often of a moral na- 
ture as well ; that is, they were most likely to prevail 
in an age where, along with an intense belief in the 
supernatural, there went great wickedness and highly 
wrought passions ; and the breaking of the power of 
such diseases was connected in an immediate way with 
the sane and healthful views of the kingdom of heaven 
which Jesus taught. But the words also suggest the 
question whether Jesus did not carry out the idea fur- 
ther still. It is perfectly possible that a strong and 
beneficent nature such as Jesus' was, and especially in 
such an age as the age in which Jesus lived, might 
have had a much wider influence over sickness than 
this ; that Jesus might have carried on a somewhat 
extended ministry of healing which he looked upon as 
a special token of God's presence, and which he thus 
appealed to in support of his mission. 

Now it must be noticed that this is rather more than 
can fairly be got out of the argument with the Phari- 
sees when taken by itself, for it is not just the same 
thing to make a passing argument ad hominem in an- 
swer to an attack which actually has been made upon 
him, and really to rest his authority upon this argu- 
ment, and make continual use of it. Still the latter 
is not impossible, or even very unlikely. To be sure 
we may not like to find that Jesus has fallen into such 
a mistake, but the possibility that he should be mis- 
taken must be conceded. If he had found himself 
possessed of the power of working remarkable cures, 
it is conceivable, with his vivid sense of God's imme- 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 5 5 

diate presence in the universe, that he should have at- 
tributed his success more directly to God's special and 
unusual agency than one who had a more modern and 
scientific view of the world would feel justified in do- 
ing. And this might seem to account admirably for 
several puzzling things in the Gospels. It would ac- 
count for the unwavering and comparatively early testi- 
mony to such miracles of healing in Jesus' life ; it would 
account for a number of sayings attributed to Jesus in 
which he seems to claim for himself miraculous power ; 
and it would serve at least as a basis in accounting for 
those narratives which have been especially stubborn 
in resisting a mythical and legendary explanation. 

So far as the general descriptions of Jesus' healing 
go, when they are not backed by something concrete 
and definite they cannot be held to count for very much 
as evidence. The greater part of them are due to 
Mark, and they seem to be nothing more than infer- 
ences or generalizations from the concrete stories. If 
the source from which Mark drew told how the disci- 
ples had been commissioned to heal the sick, and then 
if Mark proceeds to tell how the sick were healed, his 
statement cannot be assigned any independent value. 
Moreover, if cures really did occur in the case of de- 
moniacs, as we are ready to admit, even though there 
may have been no great number of them, this would 
be quite enough to give a start to tradition, and it only 
would require a moderate amount of time to grow into 
a general healing ministry. But this tells nothing as 
to what Jesus' attitude towards these cures may have 
been, and to answer this question it will be necessary 
to examine, first the sayings which are attributed to 
Jesus, and then the narratives of special cures which 
seem to deserve particular attention. 



156 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

When John sent messengers to Jesus to ask him 
about his Messiahship, Jesus did not send back a 
direct answer. "Tell John," he says, "the things 
which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, 
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached 
to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall find none 
occasion of stumbling in me. ' ' This reply is not alto- 
gether above suspicion, and yet there does not seem to be 
ground enough for rejecting it in its essential features. 
Assuming then that words resembling these really were 
spoken by Jesus, on the surface they might seem to fur- 
nish an answer to the question, and to show that Jesus 
had performed some remarkable cures upon which he 
was content to rest the proof of his Messiahship. But as 
soon as one begins to examine the answer, he will see 
that this is by no means so certain as it might appear. 
To be sure it must be admitted that in their present 
form the words refer most naturally to the actual heal- 
ing of diseases, and the Evangelists evidently under- 
stand them in this way ; but there is nothing at all 
violent in the supposition that the saying may have 
been modified somewhat in the course of transmission, 
through a desire that it should conform more exactly 
to the cures which actually were reported of Jesus. 
And in favor of this there are two facts to be consid- 
ered. In the first place the selection of examples is 
strange in Jesus' mouth. The cure of demoniacs, which 
is well attested, is not mentioned at all, and the things 
which are mentioned, the cleansing of lepers and most 
of all the raising of the dead, even the Gospels recog- 
nize as marking an exceptional height of Jesus' power, 
so that they could not have been spoken of in this way 
as ordinary occurrences. But it would have been quite 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 5 7 

natural for a later disciple to choose for his samples 
those instances which seemed to him most striking. 
And again there is the fact that undoubtedly the say- 
ing has a reference in it to a set of passages in the book 
of Isaiah, and so is likely in the first instance to have 
corresponded somewhat more closely to these than it 
does at present. But at any rate this connection with 
Isaiah has an important bearing on the manner in 
which the saying ought to be interpreted. In Isaiah 
these passages in part describe in a highly figurative 
way the blessings of the Messianic age, and in part 
they refer solely and unmistakably to facts which are 
purely spiritual ; in no case however would they be 
satisfied by the bodily healing of a few sick people. 
Now it certainly is true that Jesus might have under- 
stood that these words were to be literally fulfilled, but 
it also is true that a mistake of this kind is just what 
Jesus is least likely to fall into. Jesus is not accus- 
tomed to misapply passages which have a spiritual 
meaning in a literal way, but, on the contrary, he is 
more likely to pierce down to the spiritual meaning of 
literal words ; and on account of this we seldom are 
justified in taking the baldly literal meaning of Jesus' 
sayings unless we find that a deeper meaning is forced 
and unnatural. But here, if once we admit that Jesus 
intends a quotation, there is no difficulty in the least. 
Jesus does not say to John, I/x>k at the miracles which 
I do, and divine my spiritual rank from them ; but what 
he says is this : I cannot answer your question directly, 
because to you and to me the question does not mean 
the same. I only can point you to the place where you 
will find what my conception of the coming one is, and 
ask you to look for the fulfilling of that prophecy in my 
life. If to you the Messiah is one who comes to heal 



158 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

the spiritual ills of men, to make the Gospel of divine 
truth the common property of all, yes, I am the Mes- 
siah ; and blessed is he whosoever shall find none occa- 
sion of stumbling in me. And there are a number of 
things which go to show that this interpretation is the 
right one. The closing sentence of Jesus' words indicates 
that the proof which he had offered was not one which 
he had much hope would appeal to men, but which was 
more like to put a stumbling-block in their way ; and 
this was not true of the proof from miracles, which is 
frankly and without disguise a popular appeal. More- 
over, a reference to miracles would be no real answer to 
John's question. If miracles had been performed John 
must have felt all their force before he sent to Jesus ; 
and if he still were in doubt, what would be gained by 
sending back word to him, Look to the miracles ? Was 
this really the strongest proof that Jesus had to offer ? 
And a closer examination of the words themselves will 
point to the same thing : ' ' the dead are raised up, the 
poor have good tidings preached to them. " " The poor 
have good tidings preached to them." Jesus' teaching is 
not to be got rid of altogether then ; but in this case 
it comes in in a secondary way, as an afterthought. 
Moreover, it destroys the unity of the saying ; the last 
clause brings in something which is entirely out of 
harmony with the rest of the sentence, an argument 
of a totalty different kind. And yet there is no indica- 
tion that the train of thought has been shifted, and 
from the structure of the sentence one never would 
suspect the presence of a double line of argument. If, 
therefore, one clause can refer to nothing else than 
Jesus' spiritual ministry, and if the rest of the sen- 
tence may be interpreted in more ways than one, the 
part which is unequivocal ought to be allowed the 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 159 



casting vote. The figurative meaning is then, we 
think, by far the more natural meaning ; but, it is 
said, John would not have understood it in this way. 
Undoubtedly he would not have understood it so if 
he had known of remarkable cures on Jesus' part which 
were thought to be miraculous and to which he could 
apply the words ; but if he had not known of these 
he could not have understood it otherwise. But the 
cures of Jesus are just what we have to establish ; till 
they are established we can only take the words in the 
most probable way. And taking them in this way, 
they exclude the cures. 

And for this conclusion the words of Jesus to the 
Pharisees when they asked him for a sign tell very 
strongly indeed. ' ' An evil and adulterous generation 
seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given 
it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. The men of 
Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this 
generation and shall condemn it ; for they repented at 
the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than 
Jonah is here." The first Evangelist understands this 
as a reference to the resurrection, but there can be no 
doubt that he is mistaken ; Jesus explains it himself, 
and explains it of his teaching. Let us notice carefully 
what Jesus says : he rebukes an anxiety for miraculous 
signs as belonging to an evil and adulterous generation, 
he declares absolutely that no sign shall be given to it, 
and he appeals wholly to the truth and the self-evi- 
dential nature of his preaching. If the Pharisees had 
known about the miracles of healing, how could they 
still have asked for a sign ? they had a sign already, 
and then too a knowledge of Jesus' power must have 
made them hesitate to provoke a display of it which 
should be to their own disadvantage. If Jesus had 



1 60 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

performed cures which he thought were miraculous, 
and had appealed to them as his authority, how could 
he have spoken of signs as he does speak of them? 
The whole passage is an unequivocal denial of the 
miraculous in Jesus' life ; and because it goes clean 
against the tendencies which were working in tradition, 
and because it has besides all the antecedent probabili- 
ties in its favor, it is worth much more as evidence 
than any saying on the other side could be. And along 
with this we may notice the fact that the people were 
so slow in thinking of Jesus as the Messiah. If Jesus 
had engaged in an extended ministry of healing which 
was thought to be miraculous, and if he himself had 
appealed to these miracles, this fact is very difficult to 
explain. 

Among the other sayings of Jesus whose authenticity 
cannot fairly be questioned, there is only one, apart 
from the narratives of special cures, which seems to 
claim a miraculous power, and this is the Woe against 
the Galilean cities. Here again probably it would be 
hypercritical to deny that by ' ' mighty works ' ' the 
Evangelists thought that miracles were meant, and it 
may be that the word itself can mean nothing less than 
this. And yet there are two great objections against 
understanding the saying in this way ; it implies what 
in other words of his Jesus seems expressly to exclude, 
and it places the people's guilt in their rejection of his 
miracles and not in the rejection of his teaching, which 
is utterly opposed to what we know of Jesus. In an- 
other place where Jesus is referring to this same thing, 
to his rejection by the people, he speaks simply of his 
teaching ministry : ' ' We have eaten and drunk in thy 
presence, and thou hast taught in our streets," he 
represents the people as saying, while of miracles he 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 161 

gives no hint. It is true that in Matthew, in this same 
passage, there is a direct allusion to miracles, and this 
shows how easily such an allusion could be brought 
into Jesus' words, when it did not at all belong there. 
For that we have the genuine form in L,uke and not in 
Matthew will appear when we notice that in Luke 
Jesus' words are addressed to his unbelieving country- 
men, which must be the meaning of the passage, while 
Matthew refers them to unfaithful Christians, Chris- 
tians who prophesied in Jesus' name, and cast out 
demons, and did many wonderful works, but who yet 
were workers of lawlessness, — a phenomenon which 
belongs not to Jesus' day, but to the times when the 
Evangelist wrote. We think then that Jesus can only 
be referring in general to his ministry, and to the 
power of God which had been manifested through him, 
and not to wonderful cures which he had wrought. 
Even if dvva/M? can hardly mean this, yet we have no 
evidence as to just what word it was that Jesus used, 
particularly if we have to do with a translation. At 
any rate either this saying or the saying about a sign 
has to be turned from its more obvious meaning, and 
we do not hesitate to say that here the difficulty in do- 
ing this is vastly less. 

We now have examined those sayings which seem to 
us to be from Jesus and which have a bearing on the 
question ; but there still remain a number besides 
which cannot be received with so much confidence. 
One of these, which is present in the charge to the 
Twelve, we shall have to examine with some thorough- 
ness at a later point, and so to save repetition we will 
pass it by for the time being, and turn to the others. 
And we should like to anticipate here a criticism w T hich 
no doubt will be made, that it is easy enough to prove 



1 62 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

a point when one is at liberty to explain away. all the 
evidence on the other side. But because a point can 
only be established after opposing evidence is tested 
and rejected, this need not give rise to any presumption 
against its being true ; and it is a cheap triumph to 
dismiss it with the words ' ' explained away. ' * As a 
matter of fact it is the very nature of human testimony 
that it should be conflicting, and a great part of the 
critic's duty is to find out, if he can, what part of the 
evidence cannot be relied on. That there always will 
be much which cannot be relied on we have to expect, 
and there is nothing which would lead us not to look 
for it in the Gospels also. Now here we have tried to 
show a probability that Jesus did not believe himself to 
have worked miraculous cures. In so far as this has 
been established, opposing evidence must be looked on 
with suspicion, and if other good grounds for doubting 
it are found, it may reasonably be rejected. And to 
start in with, it must be noted that these sayings do 
not go back, as the others did, to the earlier tradition, 
but are due to Mark or else to Luke, and this greatly 
weakens the external witness in their favor. The in- 
stances in Luke may be taken first, and here in every 
case the connection which is given to the saying is 
particularly doubtful. The first case is found in the 
story of Jesus' visit to Nazareth, and against this story 
there are decided objections. In Mark there is an 
earlier account of a rejection at Nazareth, and with this 
Luke's account does not very well agree ; and while 
of course there is nothing against two visits to the 
place, two rejections are hardly to be thought of. 
Moreover, any attempt to make two different events 
out of the different versions is opposed by the fact that 
nearly all of Mark has been worked by Luke into his 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 163 

own narrative. We say "worked in," because the 
elements seem more original by far in Mark. In Luke 
the sceptical question which the neighbors ask comes 
in very abruptly, after a sentence which gives just the 
opposite impression, that Jesus' words had aroused 
their admiration ; Mark, however, has already led up 
to this question. And again the proverb which Jesus 
puts to them is introduced by Mark after the rejection 
has taken place, while in Luke it seems a rather un- 
gracious anticipation of this rejection. And besides 
this there is the fact which, as will be seen later, is 
very improbable, that Jesus openly proclaims himself 
as the Messiah ; there is the saying of Jesus, " Physi- 
cian, heal thyself," whose meaning in this connection 
never has been settled ; and there is the miracle at the 
end, which is the more improbable as Mark knows 
nothing of any violence offered to Jesus. The whole 
narrative then appears to have grown out of the earlier 
form in Mark, and to have reached its present shape 
mainly through a desire to have a frontispiece which 
should exhibit in miniature the later and national re- 
jection by the Jews. So if the saying about Elijah and 
Elisha was really spoken by Jesus, as is not impossible, 
at least it was not spoken in this connection, and 
consequently there is not the slightest thing to show that 
it referred to miracles. Nor indeed in this connection 
even is such a reference necessary. And the other 
two cases to be found in Luke are quite as doubtful. 
In one of these, when the Pharisees warn Jesus against 
Herod, the greater part of Jesus' answer is taken from 
an entirely different connection in the discourse against 
the Pharisees, and this is shown by the fact that the 
closing words addressed to Jerusalem, "Ye shall not 
see me henceforth, ' ' are obviously inappropriate when 



1 64 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Jesus had just declared that he was on the way to Jeru- 
salem. We cannot therefore rest with any confidence 
on the few words which still remain, for they have no 
special guarantee of genuineness, and the way in which 
Jesus makes his ministry consist in nothing else but 
healing is decidedly improbable. The other case is 
where the disciples come back from their mission and 
tell Jesus of the cures they have wrought. The legen- 
dary character of Jesus' answer is strongly marked in 
one part of it, where he gives his followers authority to 
tread on serpents and escape all hurt ; but the great 
objection to the incident is the fact that it does not 
agree with the narrative to which L,uke joins it, and 
which of necessity it implies. In that narrative Jesus 
authorizes the disciples whom he is sending out to 
cast out demons, but here the power over demons 
appears as something unexpected. L,uke himself 
notices this hitch in the connection, and so he leaves 
all reference to the demons out of Jesus' charge. And 
to make assurance doubly sure, even if the incident 
could be shown to belong to this connection, that very 
fact, as we shall show in another place, would be fatal 
to it. 

After L,uke it would be in order next to take the 
instances in Mark, but because these are so closely 
connected with the larger question as to the general 
credibility of Mark's additions, we shall pass them by 
for the moment, content with the main results which 
we have reached. It is to be remembered that at best 
Jesus' words only establish the existence of strange 
cures effected by him, and not that these cures were mir- 
acles ; and it would be easier to think that Jesus was 
mistaken than, simply to save his authority, to suppose 
the miracles were real ones. But we have tried to 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 165 



show that of the sayings which bear upon the question, 
after we have thrown out those whose genuineness is 
so doubtful that as evidence they can count for nothing, 
there is one which denies distinctly any connection 
on Jesus' part with miraculous signs, and there is 
only one which can fairly be used to prove the con- 
trary, and that this is open to another meaning. When 
therefore we turn to the stories themselves which we 
have in the Gospels, there is, we think, a certain 
presumption against their being true. At least we 
may expect to find a large admixture of legend, for it 
would be strange indeed if, when the nature-miracles 
have so much of legend in them, none should be pre- 
sent in the cures as well. Nevertheless there are cer- 
tain of the cures wdrich seem to have special marks of 
genuineness which the nature-miracles do not have, 
and these are the ones which we shall examine first. 
The most prominent of these are the Sabbath cures, 
and these apparently are four in number. But this list 
has carefully to be sifted, and we have shown already 
how three of them depend upon a single story which 
was present in the source. And now the words of 
Jesus, which Matthew and Luke both have retained, 
the illustration of a sheep fallen into a pit, without doubt 
are genuine. But in how far does this saying make the 
miracle necessary ? If we compare Matthew and Luke 
we find that the account originally opened with a ques- 
tion, about which both Evangelists agree, " Is it lawful 
to heal on the Sabbath day ? " ; only Luke gives this 
question to Jesus, while Matthew attributes it to the 
Pharisees. And Matthew here has the probabilities in 
his favor, for such questions often were put to Jesus by 
the Pharisees, while Jesus knew very well what the 
Pharisees believed about it. Luke's change, besides, 



1 66 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 

can be explained by comparing him with Mark, for 
Mark too has a very similar question put in Jesus' 
mouth. But as soon as we admit this, at once it be- 
comes probable that we have to do, not with a miracle 
at all, but only with a theoretical question, like the 
question about the great commandment or about di- 
vorce, by which the Pharisees constantly were trying 
to entrap Jesus. It is not likely, as Matthew repre- 
sents, that the Pharisees would have asked the question 
to lead Jesus into a real violation of the law, for if the 
cure had seemed to be miraculous of course it would 
have put them to confusion ; nor is it likely that in the 
presence of a miracle the Pharisees would have ventured 
to make any objection. And the nature of the cure 
itself bears this out, for the withered hand and the 
command of Jesus point clearly to the Old Testament 
story of Jeroboam. At first then, we must think, there 
was only a question which was put to Jesus, and which 
he answered in this way ; but afterwards it was sup- 
posed that Jesus pointed his moral with an actual cure, 
and so, following a story in the Old Testament, the 
miracle crept into the narrative. How, as the Gospel 
literature grew, other accounts, slightly differing, arose 
out of this, it still is possible to trace. And in the 
meanwhile in a different field, tradition had taken still 
another turn, and as a result we have the story of the 
woman bowed together. In itself this story is suspi- 
cious, for, not to insist upon its late appearance, the 
bearing of the ruler of the synagogue in the presence 
of a miracle is far from being probable, and the corre- 
spondence between the cure and the illustration is too 
ingenious to be natural. But what is fatal to it is its 
evident resemblance to the other story ; and since it 
imitates this, not only in the illustration which it puts 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 167 

in Jesus' mouth, but also in the later addition of a mir- 
acle, it cannot be allowed any authority. 

And in the other case where a saying of Jesus is closely 
connected with a cure, the case of the palsied man, in 
spite of the confidence with which the genuineness of 
the saying has been said to be self-evident, we cannot 
think that this is so. ' ' Who is this that forgiveth 
sins also ? ' ' say the Pharisees ; and Jesus answers, 
' ' Whether is easier, to say Thy sins are forgiven ; or 
to say Arise and walk ? But that ye may know that 
the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, — 
Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house." 
Let us notice that here the cure is only a secondary 
thing, performed just to let the Pharisees know that 
the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins. 
This is the motive of the whole narrative ; the claim 
is not forced from Jesus, but he expressly leads to it. 
Now who is it likely would have been most anxious to 
prove the authority of Jesus to forgive sins, and would 
have thought that this was established satisfactorily 
by a miracle, Jesus himself, or a disciple who was 
occupied with theories about Jesus' person and 
authority ? We think that there can be but one 
answer to the question. And as an incident in Jesus' 
life there are two strong objections to this story : it 
goes upon a view which we know is a mistaken view, 
and which a man of Jesus' spiritual insight is not 
likely to have held, that sickness is sent as a punish- 
ment for sin, and it contradicts other facts in Jesus' 
life. We shall find that Jesus in his public life care- 
fully avoided any direct claim to be the Messiah, and 
that his Messiahship for a long time was not suspected. 
But this claim which Jesus makes without any provo- 
cation really involves a claim to be Messiah, and it is 



1 68 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

hard to understand how the Pharisees could have 
avoided seeing it. 

And now let us take another narrative which it has 
been thought makes a miracle by Jesus necessary, and 
which we agree has a strong appearance of being gen- 
uine, the narrative of the Syro-Phcenician woman. It 
may make the matter plainer to reproduce the story in 
full as it is given in Matthew. 

" And Jesus went out thence, and withdrew into the 
parts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanitish 
woman came out from those borders, and cried, saying, 
Have mercy on me, O L,ord, thou son of David ; my 
daughter is grievously vexed with a demon. But he 
answered her not a word. And his disciples came and 
besought him, saying, Send her away ; for she crieth 
after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent 
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But 
she came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. 
And he answered and said, It is not meet to take the 
children's bread and cast it to the dogs. But she said, 
Yea, Lord : for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which 
fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered 
and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith : be it 
done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter 
was healed from that hour. ' ' 

Now in the first place, a part of this story, the words 
of the disciples and Jesus' answer to them, is not found 
in Mark ; was it originally a part of the narrative ? A 
majority of critics have said that it does belong to the 
original story, but in spite of this we have no hesita- 
tion in answering the other way. We will not argue 
that these words of Jesus are opposed to Jesus' own 
point of view, for this is something that we have still 
to prove ; we only point out their connection with an- 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 169 

other sentence which is attributed to Jesus. ' ' Go not 
into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any 
city of the Samaritans : but go rather to the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel" — here we have the same phrase 
and the same point of view. In the case of every 
other saying in the Gospels which is found in two or 
more connections, there is reason to believe that only 
one of these connections is a true one, and here there- 
fore it is probable that we have no exception. And 
we actually find that while in the instructions to the 
disciples the phrase is closely bound up with the context, 
in the case of the miracle the phrase is brought in quite 
violently. In Mark's account the woman comes to 
Jesus and makes her request, and this is what naturally 
she would do. But in Matthew she follows Jesus for 
some distance, shouting aloud to him, which is much 
less likely. And even in Matthew, after the object of 
this strange proceeding is accomplished and Jesus has 
been given an opportunity to utter the saying which 
has been put into his mouth, the woman comes at once 
to Jesus and makes her request in a reasonable way, 
just as she does in Mark. Mark's account then, we 
think, is the original account ; and in this form it seems 
at first, as we have already admitted, somewhat violent 
to deny its genuineness. Indeed, we should like to be- 
lieve that so charming a story in the main was true, 
and we should be inclined to do so if it were not for 
one thing about it, the curious relation which it bears 
to another story in the Gospels, the story of the centu- 
rion's son. Just as soon as we get rid of the additions 
by Matthew we see that the parallelism is complete. 
Both are concerned with Gentiles ; then in one we have 
a father asking help for his son, in the other a mother 
for her daughter; both centre about a clever saying 



1 70 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

uttered by the suppliant, the only instances of the kind 
in the Gospels ; in both Jesus, contrary to his usual 
custom, commends highly the faith which is displayed ; 
in both he heals the sufferer at a distance, again the 
only instances of this ; both narratives close with the 
same words. If either of these narratives had stood 
alone we should have hesitated much before we doubted 
it, but with both of them together, without hesitation 
we must reject them both. That in the only two in- 
stances in which Jesus came in contact with a Gentile, 
the circumstances, unusual in themselves, should have 
been exactly the same, is almost impossible, so that we 
can only regard it as a clever attempt to picture, by 
two companion stories, the faith of the Gentiles carried 
back into Jesus' own life. 

The narratives of healing for which the most can be 
said we have now considered, and have found reason 
to reject them all, without, we hope, using means that 
are too forced. And now the rest of the cures it be- 
comes very hazardous to retain, particularly as in the 
most of them there are clear marks of legend. As an 
example we may take the raising of Jairus' daughter ; 
after we throw out Mark's additions and go back to 
the earliest account, we see how very slender the evi- 
dence for it is. A man asks Jesus to raise his dead 
daughter ; without demur Jesus goes to the house, quiets 
the mourners with an assurance that the death will only 
prove a sleep, and restores the girl to life. How can 
any one possibly maintain that this story blocks the 
way to a rejection of the miracles ? The story is found 
in a book whose author we do not know, and one hardly 
can ask for clearer marks of legend than it presents. 
The only thing which has been able to save it in the 
past has been the life-like details which Mark has 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 1 7 1 

added, and these, as we have seen and shall see again, 
cannot be allowed the least authority. Again there is 
the healing of the epileptic boy : the very feature which 
seems to be the most genuine, the despondent words of 
Jesus, " How long shall I be with you ? how long shall 
I suffer you ? ' ' show how little the narrative is to be 
depended on, when we notice how, coming after the 
descent from the Mount of Transfiguration, they point 
to the displeasure which Moses showed when he came 
down from the mountain, himself transfigured. But 
into further details we shall not go ; if we have con- 
vinced our readers in the cases which already we have 
examined we have said enough, and if we have not 
convinced them it is useless to say more. 

We conclude then that for an extended healing min- 
istry in Jesus' life, for anything, in fact, more than an 
influence over demoniacs, the evidence is very slight 
indeed. And with this also we rest the case against 
the miracles as a whole. We started by assuming that 
there must be a strong presumption against any narra- 
tive which professed to tell of a supernatural event, and 
that only the most unassailable evidence could serve to 
overcome this presumption. Such evidence we have 
not found, but, quite the contrary, we have found the 
evidence breaking down just where it seemed the 
strongest ; we constantly have come across the signs 
which ordinarily mark the presence of legend, and have 
been able in some cases to detect legend in its growth. 
Accordingly we hereafter shall consider ourselves justi- 
fied in doing what elsewhere the critic does not hesitate 
to do without all this preliminary investigation, and 
shall regard a narrative, when it tells of the miracu- 
lous, as on the face of it in some sort of error. We 
have then one criterion which will aid most effectually 



172 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

in answering the question which it will be convenient 
at this point to ask in regard to each of our three Gos- 
pels, What, in some approximate measure, is the 
degree of weight which ought to be assigned to a 
statement when it cannot be traced to the definite body 
of tradition which has been called the source ? In the 
case of Matthew the answer to the question is very 
easy. The new matter which Matthew brings in is not 
only legendary, but it is flagrantly so. Angels inter- 
fere continually and as a matter of course in human 
affairs, mysterious stars appear to guide adoring magi 
to the infant King, men walk on the sea, coins are 
found in fishes' mouths, dead men rise and appear to 
many. And quite in the fashion of legend, too, though 
without the miracle, is the direct prophecy to Judas, 
the washing of Pilate's hands and his wife's dream, 
the fearful end of the traitor, and the guard at the 
tomb. In one or two cases when a new fact is intro- 
duced, the writer himself shows us what authority he 
had by joining an Old Testament prophecy to it. In- 
deed the very fact that the Evangelist has so little that 
is new shows that he had no original source of infor- 
mation. When he wants two stories to fill out a group 
of miracles, he does not hunt for new ones, but in a 
slightly mutilated form he uses two which he had before 
him in his source, and which he afterwards proceeds to 
bring in again in their proper places. 1 In Luke again, 
while the answer cannot be given as absolutely as in 
the case of the first Gospel, yet on the whole the same 
decision must become to, that Luke's authorities, when 
he leaves his two main sources, are not very reliable, 
and that his narratives at least have been a good deal 



1 Mat. 9 : 27-34. 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 173 

demoralized in the process of transmission, even if they 
had any secure basis at the start. A number of the 
narratives already have had to be examined in various 
connections, or will have to be : the rejection at Naza- 
reth, the call of the disciples, the anointing of Jesus 
in the Pharisee's house, the return of the seventy, the 
story of the woman bowed together and of the lepers, 
and the reply to the Pharisees' warning against Herod. 
Cases of the same sort with these are the two narra- 
tives of the centurion's servant and of the widow's son 
at Nain. The first is a further development of a story 
which has been shown to be without foundation, and it 
is not a very happy development at that, for it takes the 
point from the centurion's words to make them only an 
after-thought, and to put them in the mouth of ser- 
vants, while the motive for this is evident in a desire to 
increase the centurion's humility. And the second 
seems to be an imitation of the older raising of the 
dead, although it goes beyond this in the fact that 
Jesus makes the first move in the matter. A similar 
judgment must be passed upon the early chapters of 
the Gospel, which throughout are pervaded with the 
atmosphere of miracle. Quite as adverse must be the 
decision in the less numerous cases where a statement 
must be assigned to the author of the book himself, 
and not to some unknown source which he is using. 
How ready the author is to avail himself of the right 
of conjecture has appeared in several instances during 
the discussion of the Synoptic problem, and these are 
not the only ones. The most noticeable instance is the 
way in which he brings a considerable part of the ma- 
terial of his book into the last journey to Jerusalem, and 
creates besides a mission of seventy disciples in connec- 
tion with this journey. Now in itself this cannot be 



t 74 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

called likely, and indeed Luke finds the carrying out 
of his program a clumsy enough task. In the ninth 
chapter the time for Jesus' death is almost at hand, 
and he already has got as far as to Samaria, with his 
face stedfastly set towards Jerusalem ; and in the tenth 
and thirteenth chapters again he still is ' ' on the way. ' ' 
But in the thirty-first verse of the thirteenth chapter 
he is back again in Galilee, and in the seventeenth 
chapter only has got to the Samaritan border. More- 
over Jesus sends out thirty-five pairs of disciples in 
whose footsteps he is to follow, a formidable task at 
best, one might think, for a single man. But instead 
of starting off at once to do this, though already he has 
begun his journey to Jerusalem and the days are well- 
nigh come that he should be received up, all the 
seventy have returned before he makes another step ; 
and yet from Jesus' charge to them we should suppose 
that he anticipated a somewhat lengthy absence. But 
it is needless to dwell upon these difficulties, when we 
notice the material out of which Luke has constructed 
his account. For the most part he has taken a great 
section bodily from his source, but in the source this 
section was nothing but a group of disconnected inci- 
dents, and Luke's disposal of it is only a curiously 
infelicitous instance of the way in which he constantly 
tries to force his two authorities into the same chrono- 
logical scheme. The charge to the Seventy, again, is 
precisely the charge which in Matthew is given to the 
Twelve, and we need better authority than Luke can 
give us before two separate events can be admitted. As 
a matter of fact Luke seems to have made the same 
mistake here which he makes once again in the case of 
the Sabbath cure. In the source the charge probably 
was given to ' ' disciples, ' ' for the source had no account 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 175 

of the calling of the Twelve. But Mark in his 
abridged account limited it to the Twelve, and in this 
Matthew followed him. Luke, however, because he 
found a short account in Mark and a longer one in the 
source, got the idea that they referred to different 
events, and it only was left for him to discover that the 
1 ' disciples ' ' were seventy in number, and so symbol- 
ized the mission to the nations. This is perhaps the 
most striking instance which will be found in the book, 
but somewhat similar cases in which an unfortunate 
setting is given to an incident are not infrequent. 
Such a case is the supposition that the woes against 
the Pharisees were spoken at table, and were directed 
towards the host himself, because he had expressed 
surprise that Jesus' disciples were not following the 
ordinary custom. Such an occasion lowers Jesus' 
matchless oratory into a mere tirade, which does not 
even keep to the bounds which common politeness 
would prescribe. Something more than this was 
needed to raise Jesus to such a fierce heat of indignation, 
and the whole situation seems only to have been sug- 
gested by the figure of the cup and platter, which was 
wholly innocent of any such a literal side-reference. 
A very similar case occurs in the fourteenth chapter, 
where a whole list of incidents are strung together as 
table-talk at a Pharisee's house. There is a possibility 
that the saying about Sabbath healing, before it was 
turned into a miracle, had such a setting, though the 
Pharisees who were interested to lead Jesus into a trap 
were not the most likely to show hospitality to him ; 
but the parable of the supper, as its connection in 
Matthew and its own internal character show, does not 
belong here, and the discourse about the chief seat 
loses all its force, and becomes only a more subtle and 



1 76 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

effective minister to pride, when it is turned into direc- 
tions literally to be observed. 

There still remain a considerable number of dis- 
courses which are peculiar to the third Gospel, as well 
as a few historical allusions by which L,uke's accuracy 
may be tested, and these will be referred to in their 
proper place. But of the historical matter a pretty 
large share has now been mentioned, enough to enable 
us to draw the same conclusion which was drawn in 
the case of Matthew, that the Evangelist is not an 
original authority, and by himself furnishes no guaran- 
tee that he has got at the true facts of the case, though 
no doubt he does the best he can, and has no thought 
of creating wrong impressions. When we turn to 
Mark, however, a case presents itself which in a con- 
siderable degree differs from anything which we have 
come across in the other Gospels, and which cannot be 
settled in exactly the same way. Matthew and L,uke 
do indeed treat their sources with great freedom, and 
yet on the whole they evidently do not intend to give 
anything more than what actually lies before them, 
with such explanatory notes as they think will make 
things plainer to their readers. They have apparently 
no special ambition to add embellishments of their 
own, and what they do add is mostly in the nature of 
conjecture, suggested in the larger number of cases by 
something in the narrative itself. In Mark, however, 
this explanation will not suffice, for Mark is all the 
time bringing details for which there is no justification 
in the context. Moreover the greater part of Mark's 
new matter, alike the stories which are wholly new, 
and the amplifying details, are so thoroughly of a 
piece, and so related to the general design of the book, 
that we hardly can suppose that he has got them from 



The Credibility of the Gospels, 177 

oral tradition or from another written source ; so that 
we are left to face the dilemma either of invention, 
with perhaps in most cases some hint come by through 
tradition as a starting-point, or else of a particularly 
wide and close acquaintance with the actual facts. 
And in favor of this last alternative there can be 
brought forward the undoubted vividness and life-like- 
ness of Mark's additions, which have led an influential 
school of modern critics to look on Mark as represent- 
ing a very old stratum of tradition indeed. Neverthe- 
less we are obliged to reject this decisively. We have 
already given reasons for thinking it impossible that 
the author of the book should have got his facts direct 
from eye-witnesses of Jesus' life, and the more carefully 
the book is examined, the more this conclusion will 
approve itself. With all their verisimilitude, the 
narratives will not stand a careful scrutiny. Among 
the instances which were adduced in the first 
chapter, it will be remembered that there were four 
miracle-stories which appeared in a longer form in 
Mark, and we showed why, on critical grounds, we 
thought that Matthew's versions were to be preferred. 
And now, after the discussion of the miracles, we may 
add that the fact that it is to miracle-stories that the 
additions have been made, goes again to show that 
real reminiscences they cannot be. And yet they are 
to the full as admirable specimens of the art of story- 
telling as will be found anywhere in the book. And 
the story of the epileptic boy deserves a special men- 
tion. It is here that one of the sayings comes in 
which would point to a healing ministry on Jesus' 
part, if only it were genuine, — " This kind goeth not 
out save by prayer." That this is a part of Mark's 
additions is shown by its absence from the other Gos- 



1 78 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

pels, and also by the fact that the preceding sentence 
which appears in Matthew, ' ' The boy was healed 
from that hour, ' ' is a regular formula in the source to 
mark the end of a narrative of healing. The same 
objection also, that they tell of miracles, will condemn 
several other stories which are due to Mark entire. 
The cursing of the fig-tree and the walking on the 
sea have been discussed already, and besides these is 
the cure of blind Bartimaeus, and the cures of a deaf 
man and a blind man in the seventh and eighth chap- 
ters. These, all of them, show Mark's dexterous 
touch most distinctly in the minuteness with which 
they enter into details, and the last two should be 
noticed in particular. These introduce a touch which 
is quite anomalous, and represent Jesus' cures as medi- 
ated through physical means. If we take these nar- 
ratives seriously, and try to find an explanation for 
them, we shall only have our labor for our pains. 
Suppose we take the case of the blind man : Jesus 
spits on his eyes and effects a partial cure, and then 
a second application completes the process. But apart 
from the fact that this is an isolated case, why any- 
way should Jesus have used spittle ? Of course, in no 
case could the spittle have done good, so what was to 
be gained by such a sham ? If one says it was to in- 
crease the blind man's faith, this may mean either of 
two things. If it means that faith, or mental confi- 
dence, was the effective instrument of the cure, then 
at least it does away with the need of a miracle. But 
a faith cure in such a case is barely possible, and the 
confidence with which Jesus goes to work, as well as 
the success he meets with, is strange enough. If, 
however, one means faith in the higher sense, and 
supposes that this by-play was just to keep the mira- 



The Credibiliiy of the Gospels. 1 79 



cle from being morally unfruitful, then nothing is 
explained after all ; for it is not easy to see how a par- 
tial miracle caused by spittle would be likely to beget 
truer faith than a complete miracle effected by a word. 
In truth, the thing would be hard to solve on any 
terms, if it were not in Mark that it was found ; but 
if Mark has gone to work as we contend he has, then 
this is nothing but another example of the concrete, pal- 
pable, minute way, in which he loves to bring before 
himself every detail which will make an incident more 
real. 

And another point against Mark's pictures is the 
way in which, to form them, he brings details to- 
gether out of his written sources. Nearly all of his 
discourses he has made up in this way, by joining 
passages together which seemed to afford a pretty good 
connection ; and sometimes in his history he has fol- 
lowed the same plan. The best example of this is in 
the sketch with which he opens Jesus' ministry. We 
have shown already how Jesus' words are borrowed 
from the Baptist, how the miracle in the synagogue is 
taken from another connection, how the phraseology 
depends continally upon the source. With what con- 
fidence can we rely upon such a piece of patchwork, 
however cleverly it is put together, as a true ac- 
count ? or what likelihood is there that an au- 
thor who was forced to use such methods had rich 
stores of good information within his reach ? And 
there is, besides, against this sketch, the fact that it 
makes Jesus start in at once on a general healing 
ministry, and the fact that it has a wrong idea of what 
the real nature of Jesus' teaching was. No doubt it 
adds to the picturesqueness of the scene, and gives an 
incisiveness to the delineation, to represent Jesus as 



180 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

starting on his work with so much vim, rushing from 
town to town, with time only for a day in the largest. 
But as a real fact Jesus was not in such a hurry as this, 
and if he had been it would have played havoc with 
all his plans. Even if his thought had been just to 
put himself before the people as Messiah, he could not 
have gained this by a hurried proclamation simply ; 
but really his aims were far deeper than this, as we 
shall see, and could be carried out onry by patient and 
continued effort. And another case may be noticed in 
this connection, because it has a saying that refers to 
miracles connected with it. In the ninth chapter there 
are two incidents related, the dispute about precedence 
and the account of a man who cast out demons in 
Jesus' name, and there is, besides, a long discourse 
joined with them. But the parts of this discourse — 
almost all of them — are taken out of other connections ; 
there is another dispute about precedence where the 
accompanying discourse is far more genuine ; and 
Jesus' reply to John's complaint is only a transforma- 
tion of a better attested sa3dng, ' ' He that is not for us 
is against us " : so that there really remains nothing, 
except possibly one aphorism by Jesus, upon which one 
can lay his hand securely as a token of real knowledge. 
And one other strong indication against the relia- 
bility of Mark's statements still remains in the fact that 
a good share of them are connected more or less closely 
with the dramatic framework in which Jesus' life is 
set. We have noticed some of the elements of this 
already, and now that, along with the paucity of new 
information in other directions, Mark should yet have 
possessed such an abundance of reliable intelligence on 
a very few unimportant points, for instance that he 
should have had such graphic knowledge of the crowds 



The Credibility of the Gospels, 1 8 1 

about Jesus and the sick people who were healed on so 
many different occasions, passes credence, and is a clear 
indication of the way in which these picturesque de- 
tails should be received. The repeated prophecies of 
coming death, largely in the same words, are another 
instance of the sort, and so too are the numerous 
notices which centre about Mark's idea of Jesus' Mes- 
siahship and its acknowledgment. This last may be 
noticed because it accounts for a fact which often has 
been brought up as proof for the reality of the mira- 
cles, that Jesus sometimes forbids the miracle to be 
reported. The truth however seems to be that this is 
due to Mark, who, with his conception of Jesus' Mes- 
siahship as hidden from the people by reason of their 
unbelief, makes use of it, now to keep demons from 
making known the fact, and now to restrict the spread 
of some particularly marvellous deed of power. It 
may be thought that also it is meant to serve for 
heightening the impression of Jesus' popularity, for 
there often is joined to it a notice that it proved of no 
avail, and that the crowds only thronged about Jesus 
the more. But apart from these more patent cases, two 
other instances, less obvious, may be pointed out in 
which the author's desire to give dramatic movement 
to his story has dominated the use of his material. 
One is the way in which he depicts the growth of the 
hostility against Jesus, and more particularly two 
incidents which he gives with this aim in view. In 
the third chapter he tells how the enmity of the Phari- 
sees reaches such a height that they resolve to make 
away with Jesus, if it lies within their power ; and for 
this purpose they even are ready to join hands with the 
Herodians. How much reliance can be placed upon 
this very definite statement will appear from the fact 



1 82 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

that the occasion for it is found in the healing on the 
Sabbath day, and we have seen that this cure never 
occurred at all. Mark then clearly in this place has 
transformed a miracle which he found before him, to 
adapt it better to his purpose, and then has made it a 
marked point in the drama which he is constructing 
and has connected a definite statement with it, entirely, 
it would seem, under the guidance of his own sense of 
fitness. And closely connected with this there is an- 
other incident which is even more elaborate, the inci- 
dent on the lake when the disciples forget to take 
bread. The saying about leaven, which the other 
Evangelists misunderstand, has, as Mark shows, a di- 
rect reference back to this same statement which is 
made in connection with the Sabbath healing. But if 
the motive for the incident is swept away, then it is 
dangerous of course to hold on to the incident itself, 
and not less dangerous when we notice how gross the 
disciples' mistake is for a real mistake, and how the 
story goes on to imply the two miracles of feeding, 
which are in the last degree doubtful. Again there- 
fore we are led back to the same explanation, which 
we might indeed hesitate to apply if there were not so 
many other cases which called for it as well, that Mark 
has not scrupled to construct a story when he needed 
it to give completeness to his picture. 

And this appears again in a way which perhaps is 
still more striking. We have seen already that Luke's 
account of the visit to Nazareth is not to be depended 
on, and for that matter hardly more is Mark's account. 
We do not mean to doubt the fact that Jesus failed to 
find belief among his fellow-townsmen, which may all 
be true, but only to doubt whether Mark had any suffi- 
cient information on which to base his narrative. This 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 183 

must be considered improbable, because for one thing 
his story is filled so with the presupposition of the 
miracles, although the fact of a rejection he may pos- 
sibly have had to go on. What, however, we are after 
is not to disprove this narrative so much as to point 
out again the dramatic completeness which is charac- 
teristic of Mark. ' ' A prophet is not without honor, 
save in his own country, and among his own kin, and 
in his own house, " is a proverbial saying which may 
or may not have been spoken by Jesus, but which at 
least is of special interest to Mark. For this narrative 
is only the climax of a series, and already he has shown 
how Jesus suffered from unbelief among his own kins- 
men, and in his own house, in the third chapter of his 
book. These incidents have played some part in the 
theories of German critics, and curious results have 
been the outcome of them ; yet they will not stand a 
searching criticism. Jesus, we are told, returns home, 
and at once has such a crowd about him that he gets 
no chance so much as to eat. His kinsmen thereupon 
give it out that he is beside himself, and it is this which 
suggests to the Pharisees a way of accounting for 
Jesus' cures. Then Jesus' mother and brethren ap- 
pear on the scene and try in vain to get at him through 
the crowd, and this is connected closely with the accusa- 
tion of insanity. Jesus resents their interference, and 
rebukes them. Now here again there is the suspicious 
fact that the whole story is one of Mark's numerous 
attempts to picture graphically the great popularity of 
Jesus, and the enormous crowds which thronged about 
him, and there is nothing to show that he had any his- 
torical warrant for this in the matter of definite details. 
And then again the accusation by the Pharisees, which 
is taken from Mark's source, really arose in an en- 



184 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

tirely different way, and there is not the least prob- 
ability in connecting it with anything that Jesus' kins- 
men may have said. On the contrary, the charge made 
by the Pharisees seems to have been what suggested 
this other charge to Mark. And furthermore it is 
only by shutting one's eyes resolutely to the context 
that one can refuse to see a sharp rebuke in Jesus' 
words, and such a rebuke directed to his mother we 
should be a little loth to admit. But the whole thing 
gives no difficulty if we will recognize what we have 
tried to show by cumulative proof, that Mark in his 
descriptions has let his imagination have full play. 
Certainly where legend works at all, as legend cer- 
tainly does work in the Gospels, imagination contin- 
ually must come in, and it is no harder to admit that 
it comes in at this particular point, than that to some 
one else was due the details which the Gospel writer 
simply copied as he found them. 

And where then, some may ask in real perplexity, 
are we to find the materials which will help us to make 
out the true story of Jesus' life, if his biographers are 
not to be depended on, and if legend throws a dark 
mist over everything which we would fain look to for 
light. Now we are not responsible for the facts in the 
case. We should rejoice as much as any one if there 
were full and unmistakable knowledge which would 
bring before us every phase of Jesus' life. But if the 
knowledge is not there, it will not better things to pre- 
tend we have it, and to refuse to give up any scrap of 
information after its baselessness has appeared, just be- 
cause we have nothing else to take its place. It is true 
that a large part, yes, a very large part indeed of all 
we seemed to know about Jesus has crumbled away, 
and it naturally is with regret that we see it fall. But 



The Credibility of the Gospels. 185 

fall it must, and all we can do is to go cheerfully to 
work, and see if enough is not still left to restore the 
picture, which seems on the point of fading away, to 
something of its former brightness, perhaps to a glory 
that shall eclipse the old. It is to this task that we 
shall now address ourselves. 




PART II.— THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF 
JESUS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PREPARATION. 

THE early life of Jesus is wrapped in an obscurity 
which we can never hope will grow any less dark 
and impenetrable than it is at the present. 
Apart from what we can say of any Jewish child, and 
from a few guesses to which later events give a certain 
probability, there are barely two or three facts about 
him which dimly can be descried in the shadowy back- 
ground by which poetic legend and religious faith have 
striven with loving pains to fill up the broken outlines 
of the Master's life. For any hope that out of the 
stories in the early chapters of the Gospels, beautiful 
as some of them undoubtedly are, anything of value 
can be disentangled for the real history of Jesus' life, 
will end in disappointment. It would be a waste of 
time for us to criticise the narratives at length, because 
one's bearing towards them is determined already by 
his bearing towards the Gospels as a whole. They are 
in the latest stratum of the Gospel literature, and by 

187 



1 88 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

themselves they furnish no weapon for their own de- 
fence. If the other parts of the Gospels, and so the 
miraculous in general, once were firmly established, 
then the stories of the early life might be allowed to 
stand under their protection ; but failing this they have 
nothing that can be said for them. 

According to the Gospels Jesus was born in Bethle- 
hem of Judaea, the city of David ; but this statement 
is bound up so closely with the assumption that it was 
in Bethlehem that the Messiah must be born, that it 
loses a great share of its value. It is more likely that 
Nazareth in Galilee is to be assigned the honor, for at 
least it was at Nazareth that Jesus spent his early life. 
Joseph, his father, is usually agreed to have been a 
carpenter ; and while in reality it is Jesus who is called 
the carpenter in the more original account, and while 
this account itself is not a very early or reliable one, 
yet the statement may be allowed to stand. The tra- 
dition that Jesus was of the family of David is rather 
more uncertain, because it has so evident a motive in 
his Messiahship ; but since it was accepted by men like 
Paul, who had an opportunity to know the truth, it 
may after all be thought to be not unlikely. More 
doubtful still is the time of Jesus' birth. As two in- 
dependent traditions put it in the reign of Herod we per- 
haps may accept this as having some real basis, but any 
attempt to fix the date more closely, by relying on 
apocryphal stars or even upon such definite statements 
as are made by I/Uke, will only be a waste of inge- 
nuity. For if in the rest of the book Luke shows that 
he has no independent knowledge of Jesus' ministry, 
it is unlikely, when he goes still further back, that his 
calculations of chronology can be relied on ; and the 
desperate methods which have to be employed to free 



The Preparation. 1 89 

him from the charge of proven error do not prepossess 
one in his favor. We must be content to say we do 
not know. 

Fancy will always love to dwell with the boy Jesus 
on the slopes of the Galilean hills, and watch the un- 
folding of that mind and character which were to work 
such a mighty revolution in the world of thought and 
action. A quiet boy he must have been, a little shy 
perhaps, full of genuine human sympathy and with a 
heart quickly touched, a genial friend and comrade, 
but fond, too, of the fields and watercourses, where 
he could muse without hindrance over Israel's great 
past and greater future and over Israel's God, and 
have quiet and free play for the struggling thoughts 
and emotions which came thronging to his brain. 
Then there was the home teaching in the L,aw to oc- 
cupy him, and the synagogue worship, with its sacred 
associations, and talks with neighbors and acquaint- 
ances, perhaps, from time to time, with some pious 
lawyer or Pharisee, about the I^aw and the hope of 
Israel. And most of all there was the Book of the L,aw 
itself, and all the treasures of sacred psalm and story 
and prophecy, over which Jesus had pored till he had 
mastered the fulness of the revelation which it had to 
give. To the L,aw and to Jesus' own supreme genius 
and insight, all that is most characteristic in his after- 
teaching seems to have been due. No doubt, with his 
keen vision for the things and the men about him, he 
made himself familiar with all the phases of religious 
life and thought which were influencing his country- 
men, but no one phase predominates over the rest, so 
that we can say, without hesitation, This was taken 
from such and such a source. Jesus is no Pharisee or 
Essene ; the liberalism of Alexandria is not Jesus' lib- 



190 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

eralism. What is good he takes from any source, but 
all has been so fused together and transformed by his 
own genius that it becomes a new thing in the process. 
It could not be long before Jesus would begin vaguely 
to feel that from those about him he already had got the 
most they had to give him. For Judaism there was one 
sufficient answer to all religious questions, and that 
answer was — Authority. It is one of the most strik- 
ing elements of Jesus' genius that, in the midst of this 
stagnation of the human mind, when thought was 
chained to the petty treadmill of logical and grammati- 
cal inference, he yet was forced to ask the question — 
Why ? And what had Judaism in the way of answer ? 
Because it is written, because the Elders have said, be- 
cause this is Rabbi So-and-so's opinion, — all most ex- 
cellent reasons to the ordinary Jew, but not the sort of 
thing to satisfy Jesus. Something better he must have 
than this, something to bring him closer into the presence 
of the God and Father who every day was becoming 
more to him, something worthy of God and of the 
manhood to which God revealed himself. More and 
more Jesus would find that he was forced back upon 
his own thinking, and upon the book in which already 
he had found something of the freedom which Juda- 
ism so signally was lacking in ; and with the book 
open before him, and an e}^e keen to catch every gleam 
of what was kindred to his own half-conscious crav- 
ings, the religious heroes of his boyhood could not 
fail before much time had passed to lose a good deal 
of the glamour which still surrounded them in the eyes 
of the people as a whole. And in truth they w T ere not 
very heroic figures when one had got used to the glare 
of their somewhat pretentious piety, and recovered him- 
self a little from the first shock of awe. Was it, after 



The Preparation. 191 

all, the highest duty of man to wash his hands before 
meals, and keep from eating eggs laid on the Sabbath ? 
Had God thundered on Sinai and led his children 
through fightings and perils of every kind just for 
this, that they should spend their lives in avoiding the 
touch of half of God's creation, and then in purifying 
themselves when their painstaking had been without 
avail ? Was God no more than a particularly strict 
Rabbi, on a larger scale, and man no better than a use- 
less drudge, a slave to a code of rules which led no- 
where and which had no meaning to any one ? No ; 
to Jesus, as to all the nobler spirits in the nation, it 
must appear that men were meant for far greater 
things than this ; but while others were content to let 
the two conceptions stand side by side, Jesus must 
needs ask himself what their relation was. And Jesus 
was no more satisfied with the popular and patriotic 
ideal. The need of his people stood before him as a 
very patent fact, and it met a quick response in his 
large human sympathy. But could this need be met, 
as the zealots of his people whispered, by throwing off 
the Roman yoke and proclaiming the independence of 
the nation ? and would it be much different if a con- 
queror should come from on high with sux)ernatural 
power, and set up, not a kingdom founded on the right 
relation of the individual man to God, which Jesus' 
own experience was leading him to see was after all 
the source of the truest blessedness, but an external 
kingdom that never should be moved ? 

How long it took for Jesus to answer these ques- 
tions, and to come to the position of calm certainty in 
which afterwards we find him, it is not possible for us 
to say. Probably the process was a gradual one, for 
Jesus was too profoundly sensitive to religion to throw 



i 92 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

off lightly what came to him with the odor of sanctity 
clinging to it ; and besides, the external influences 
which could help him were very few. But he did 
reach the answer, which is the main thing, and proba- 
bly the matter already lay pretty clearly in his mind 
when the nation was startled by the announcement 
that a new prophet had arisen. A new prophet ! it 
was this that for centuries now the pious Jew had been 
anxiously desiring and looking forward to, — a token 
that God's presence still was with the nation ; and one 
can imagine the thrill which stirred every village 
where the news was told. And the hopes of the 
people were not disappointed. It is little enough that 
we can say of John to-day, and yet, even apart from 
Jesus' magnificent eulogy, the few words of his which 
have come down to us are sufficient to stamp him at 
once as a man of genuine and unmistakable power, one 
of the heroic type of mankind, on whom the eye of 
Jesus could well rest with genuine satisfaction, and 
whom he could hold up with something like scorn along- 
side the typical Galilean, fickle and unreliable, or the 
effeminate and luxurious Herodian courtier. Without 
originality in the highest sense, deficient in his range 
of vision and in his sympathies, not possessed of the 
catholicity and tolerance which indeed were hardly to 
be looked for in a Jew of his time, he yet was filled 
with such a terrible earnestness and such an over- 
whelming sense of the pre-eminent value of righteous- 
ness, that he would have been called great in any age. 
Indeed he was a true successor to the older and greater 
prophets, possessed, like them, of one supreme idea, 
and striking sledge-hammer blows in its behalf, utterly 
careless of the opposition and hatred he might draw 
upon himself. The degradation and hypocrisy of the 



The Preparation. 193 

nation filled him with immeasurable disgust ; surely 
the promised presence of Jehovah could not be long 
delayed to do away utterly with such unworthiness. 
The lurid light of avenging fire and coming wrath fills 
his preaching. No fancied security from their father 
Abraham will serve them, nothing except repentance 
and righteousness. Already the axe is laid to the root 
of the trees, the time is short : repent, for the kingdom 
and its Messiah are at hand, not only with the bless- 
ings you are expecting, but with woes as well for those 
who are not prepared for him. 

Naturally enough, the leaders of the nation did not 
greatly relish John's preaching. It was not pleasant 
to be told that they themselves had been so conspicu- 
ously a failure, and doubtless, too, John's insistence 
upon righteousness alone seemed to them dangerous, 
and not to recognize sufficiently the great duty of 
obedience to the Law, and its ritual. They had no sym- 
pathy with such heresy, and they called him a fanatic, 
a man with a demon. To the people, however, John's 
preaching appealed powerfully, and especially the more 
despised classes, the publicans and harlots, turned 
eagerly to him. Crowds flocked to hear him preach 
and to submit to the simple rite by which he tried to 
symbolize and drive hard home the change of life and 
purpose which he called for. But to one man the re- 
port of John's preaching had come with a special sig- 
nificance. It may be that Jesus already had reached 
the complete conception of what his life-work was to 
be, and yet it is quite possible that John's appearance 
furnished just the impetus which caused his purposes 
to crystallize and take on definite form. At last Jesus 
had come to see clearly what the gift was that God 
had in store for his people, and how wofully inade- 



1 94 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

quate were the old ideals ; and his heart bled for the 
men about him, who were groping blindly after what 
they never could attain, and what, if attained, would 
bring no satisfaction with it, while the true blessings 
lay right within their reach. And the fact that he was 
not alone, but that one other man at least within the 
nation had seen the same thing, even though less 
clearly than himself, and had dared to come out and 
speak the truth that he had seen, must have inspired 
him with fresh courage. And what of that other prom- 
ise which John had made ? Was it indeed true that 
God was about to visit his people, and that his chosen 
one was close at hand. And then, it may be in a flash 
of insight, or perhaps by slow degrees, the knowledge 
would come to him that he, who alone had experienced 
the full blessedness of the kingdom, and who alone 
saw wherein in truth it consisted, was by this very 
fact marked out as the Messiah, the one who should 
bring home to the nation the truth which he had real- 
ized in himself and which would place in their posses- 
sion all the blessedness that God had promised. 

It is an interesting question whether John ever rec- 
ognized in Jesus the one whom he had come to an- 
nounce. The view which is based upon the Fourth 
Gospel, that John had recognized Jesus and openly had 
testified to him, it will be necessary to give up, for in 
that case Jesus' Messiahship must early have been 
known among the people. It seems, too, definitely to 
be set aside by Jesus' own words, which speak of John 
as still outside the kingdom. There is indeed much to 
be said for the opposing view that it was only after his 
imprisonment that John came to think of Jesus in this 
light, and that the question which he sent from the 
prison shows the first dawning of belief. Perhaps 



The Preparation. 195 

there is really not enough data for us to go upon, and 
yet to us it seems that this view hardly accounts for 
everything in the Gospels. It is in itself rather proba- 
ble that Jesus should have been acquainted with John ; 
it is not likely that the two men whose aims at bot- 
tom were the same should have kept wholly apart. 
Then we have, too, the evidence that Jesus took ad- 
vantage of John's baptism to dedicate himself to the 
new work on which he had resolved. It is true that 
the narrative which tells of this cannot be accepted. 
This narrative seems to have been due more immedi- 
ately to the passage which is quoted in the twelfth 
chapter of Matthew : ' ' Behold my servant, whom I 
have chosen," runs Matthew's somewhat corrupt ver- 
sion, " my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. 
I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall declare 
judgment to the Gentiles." And accordingly, in the 
story of the baptism we read how the Spirit came upon 
Jesus at the opening of his ministry, and how a voice 
came from heaven, " Thou art my beloved son, in whom 
I am well pleased." Nevertheless, the fact itself is 
hardly to be rejected, because it is a fact of such a sort 
that tradition would be less likely to invent it than to 
take offence at it, as Matthew seems already to have 
done. Moreover, we find Jesus in several passages 
showing a somewhat intimate knowledge of the Bap- 
tist, and this would suggest that he had come into 
close contact with him. And the very form of the 
question which John asks, if it be genuine, im- 
plies a former acquaintanceship. If the thought 
had been a new one to John, he would have asked, 
"Art thou the coming one?" but he hardly would 
have added "or do we look for another ? n These 
added words point to somewhat different circum- 



196 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

stances, and the circumstances to which they point 
seem to us to be these. There is nothing to show that 
John, with all his profound sense of the necessity of 
conduct, was yet able to lift himself out of the atmos- 
phere of externality which clung to the whole Jewish 
scheme of belief about divine things. His Messiah, 
for example, is a Messiah whose functions are insepa- 
rably connected with righteousness, and yet his influ- 
ence is after all outward and supernatural. Sin is 
overthrown by destroying the sinner, righteousness is 
promoted by the setting up of the direct rule of God 
through his representative. The conception of God's 
relation to man as solely a spiritual thing within the 
man himself, John was not able to reach ; he was too 
impatient to wait for the kingdom of righteousness to 
come about by natural growth, but must have it estab- 
lished at one blow. It only can have been some such 
far-reaching difference as this between the two concep- 
tions which Jesus had in mind when he spoke of John 
as still outside the kingdom, and, with all his magnifi- 
cent achievement, less than the little ones who really 
had mastered the idea of Jesus. Now if Jesus had 
known John he must have talked with him about the 
kingdom and have tried to show John his own concep- 
tion of it ; and his Messiahship, if he had spoken of it 
at all, he only could have spoken of hypothetically 
in this connection ; and perhaps even Jesus at that 
time, was not fully assured of his mission, and as 
yet had only a growing belief in it. If, then, we think 
of conversations in which Jesus' Messiahship, in con- 
nection with his new view of the kingdom, had been 
spoken of tentatively, and had been recognized as a pos- 
sibility, John's question becomes somewhat more natu- 
ral. Art thou, he asks of Jesus, the coming one, as 



The Preparation. 197 

once we thought it possible of thee ? or after all must 
we wait for another ? And the answer which Jesus 
makes to John, this also becomes plain. If John was 
just rising to a belief in Jesus, the curt, enigmatical 
answer which Jesus sends back to him is not easily 
explained, for it seems calculated to check John's grow- 
ing faith rather than to encourage it. But if the two 
already had talked the question over, if perhaps this 
very passage from Isaiah they had discussed together, 
Jesus' answer would be plain enough to John, and it 
would be all the answer that Jesus could give. And 
with all Jesus' praise of John we still seem to detect in 
his words a slight censure, as if John, with all his 
greatness, had not been able to rise to the spiritual 
conceptions of Jesus, even when the opportunity actu- 
ally had come to him. 

How long the ministry of John continued we are 
entirely unable to say ; and between Josephus and the 
Gospels, the cause of his imprisonment is not quite 
certain. It seems most likely, however, that it was not 
until this last event that Jesus entered upon the real 
work of his ministry. For this we have the statement 
of the earliest source ; and if later on the report actually 
got abroad that John had appeared again in the person 
of Jesus, this would point the same way, for if the two 
had carried on a public ministry together they must 
have been perfectly distinct in the popular mind. Just 
as little do we know the age of Jesus when he began 
his work, for Luke's statement that he was thirty years 
old has too manifest a foundation to be trustworthy. 
All we can say about it is that he was in the vigor of 
his powers, and that the conceptions upon which his 
preaching was based had already taken final and clearly 
defined shape. Before any attempt is made, however, to 



198 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

formulate Jesus' teaching, a few words will have to be 
said about the principles which are to be followed in 
criticising the records of Jesus' sayings which are 
present in the Gospels. The great value of the Gos- 
pels lies in the sayings which they have preserved for 
us, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that a large 
number of these sayings are a very exact report of 
Jesus' own words. For the most part they supply 
their own evidence. The inexhaustible charm which 
they have, the combination of tenderness and vigor, 
the tireless play of fancy which brings before us by a 
single stroke the deepest spiritual truths in such a way 
that their truth is made self-evident, this is all some- 
thing which is quite inimitable. But while this is true 
in the main of the Gospel discourses, yet it would be 
vain to expect it to be true everywhere. In the case 
of books which have arisen as our Gospels did, and 
which contain so much that is unreliable in their his- 
torical parts, it would be almost a miracle if we did 
not find a great deal attributed to Jesus which he never 
uttered, and we ought constantly to be on the lookout 
for this. And as a matter of fact, when one tries to 
formulate Jesus' teachings more exactly, he will come 
across very much indeed that will perplex him, and in 
nearly every case, in trying to determine what these 
teachings were, we will find evidence that is directly 
contradictory. And so long as the relation of the 
three Gospels to one another is left out of the account, 
it will hardly be possible for him to determine with any 
certainty what in many cases Jesus really said, for 
either he must assume uncritically that all of the say- 
ings which the Gospels record are of equal genuine- 
ness, or he must attempt to distinguish between them 
in a way which at best will have to depend very much 



The Preparation. 1 99 

upon conjecture. But if once we can determine 
whether these sayings stood in the source which our 
Evangelists used, or whether they got them in some 
less reliable way, then at least one great point will 
have been gained. Moreover where, as is the case 
more often than not, a saying has got into two or three 
different connections, the discovery of the original con- 
nection which it had will often throw a flood of light 
upon it ; and to determine this with some probability 
is not in the majority of cases a very difficult thing to 
do. For the most part it is Luke who has kept the 
connection best, while Matthew more frequently than 
Luke has woven the sayings into long discourses ; but 
of course this cannot be given as an unvarying rule, 
and it would not be safe to follow either blindly. As 
an example of the process which often must be gone 
through with, we may take the series of sayings which 
is found in the eleventh chapter of Luke, where the 
order is as follows : the dispute about casting out de- 
mons, the parable of the unclean spirit, the discourse 
about a sign, the sayings about the lamp under a 
bushel and about the sound eye. Matthew does not 
agree with this altogether. To begin with, he puts the 
parable of the unclean spirit after the demand for a 
sign, not after the dispute about casting out demons, 
and in this he seems to be right ; for while in Luke 
there is a connection of subject, in Matthew there is 
an inner connection in meaning which is much 
stronger. But what to do about the last two sayings 
one does not see so readily, for their connection in 
Luke is very forced, only an outer connection between 
lamp and light, and Matthew gives them both in sur- 
roundings which are wholly different. However, if the 
first of these, the saying about a lamp under a bushel, 



200 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

we place as Matthew places it, at the opening of the 
Sermon on the Mount, the second one, the saying 
about the sound eye, conies in very naturally after the 
parable of the unclean spirit and the discourse about a 
sign. For here it is a rebuke to the people for their 
blindness, while in Matthew's connection it only can 
refer to the aims on which the heart is set, and this has 
no natural connection with the sj^mbolism of the 
eye. 

In the first place therefore we shall have to deter- 
mine in what connection the saying originally stood. 
No doubt the process may often be a tedious one, and 
it would be much easier if we were able to dispense 
with the task altogether ; but to do this would only 
land us in greater difficulties, and the advantage of it 
we think will very quickly appear. But even if we 
can determine this, we still are not sure that we have 
Jesus' own words, for the Apostles may have trans- 
mitted them incorrectly, or they may have been added 
to at a very early period, before our three Gospels 
arose ; so that the task which it will be necessary to 
enter on is not an easy one. And no doubt to a very 
great extent the decisions which we come to must be 
subjective — that is, the critic must depend upon his own 
sense of what is likely, and in this there is large chance 
for error. But still his decision need not be arbitrary ; 
there are certain general principles which in nearly 
every case will serve to guide him. He has, to begin 
with, in a very large number of cases, two reports of the 
same saying, and a careful comparison of these will 
often prove exceedingly suggestive. As a simple illus- 
tration of this we may take the parable of the lost 
sheep, as it is found in Matthew and in L,uke. 



The Preparation. 



201 



In Matthew. 

How think ye? if any man 
have a hundred sheep, and 
one of them be gone astray, 
doth he not leave the ninety 
and nine, and go into the 
mountains and seek that which 
goeth astray ? And if so be 
that he find it, verily I say 
unto you, he rejoiceth over it 
more than over the ninety and 
nine which have not gone 
astray. 



In Luke. 

What man of you having a 
hundred sheep, and having 
lost one of them, doth not leave 
the ninety and nine in the 
wilderness, and go after that 
which is lost, until he find it ? 
And when he hath found it, 
he layeth it on his shoulders 
rejoicing. And when he cometh 
home, he calleth together his 
friends and his neighbors, say- 
ing unto them, Rejoice with 
me, for I have found my sheep 
which was lost. I say unto 
you that even so there shall 
be joy in heaven over one sin- 
ner that repenteth, more than 
over ninety and nine righteous 
persons which need no repen- 
tance. 



Now we see that this comparison of the one with the 
ninety and. nine is in both accounts, and therefore it 
was in the source from which both drew. But while in 
Luke this is in the form of an explanation which is at- 
tached to the parable, and an explanation besides which 
in itself is somewhat questionable, in Matthew it is an 
integral part of the parable itself, and comes in with 
perfect naturalness, so that there can be little doubt that 
Matthew is nearest the original. And with this the 
other element in L,uke will fall away as an addition, 
the calling together of the neighbors. And this after 
all only detracts from the naturalness of the parable, 
for it is not something which would be likely to happen 
in everyday life. 



202 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Now there are several principles which this compari- 
son suggests, and they all of them may be put together 
under one general head, conformity to the style of 
Jesus. The argument from style no doubt is often 
a dangerous weapon to employ, but in the case of Jesus 
it is singularly effective, there scarcely ever has been 
a style more characteristic and more hard to imitate. 
It will be worth while to look at this somewhat closely 
in special connection with the parables. Whatever 
else may be true of Jesus' parables there are two things 
which we always may expect to find ; in the first place 
the illustration is exquisitely natural, it is taken from 
the actual life of the people or from nature, and in the 
second place it mirrors forth a spiritual truth, and 
usually a single truth, by a happy analogy. But very 
soon the parables came to be looked at as allegories, in 
which each detail had to have its special exposition. 
There is the parable of the sower, which shows the 
naturalness of the kingdom's origin and its dependence 
upon the laws of growth : Mark already had found in 
its picturesque touches, types of the various classes of 
Christians, the birds of the air became Satan, the 
thorns tribulations and sufferings ; and the first Evan- 
gelist follows him in the baldest of allegorical inter- 
pretations. Now it can be said positively that Jesus' 
parables were not allegories. An allegory is essentially 
artificial, while a parable is natural : it is a flash of 
insight which discovers an analogy between spiritual 
and material things. Why Jesus chose to speak in 
parables is a question which hardly would be raised if 
it had not been started first by Mark, who cannot be said 
however to have thrown much light upon it. Naturally 
we should suppose it was because a parable is an ad- 
mirably vivid and effective way of presenting truth, 



The Preparation. 203 

and because Jesus' mind naturally turned to figure 
rather than to abstract definition. But the Gospels 
have another explanation for it. It is not to the 
disciples that Jesus speaks in parables but only to the 
people, " because," says Matthew, " they are so blind 
they cannot understand anything else," "in order," 
Mark has it, ' ' that they may be punished by having 
the truth presented to them in a form they cannot 
understand." Now this goes upon the assumption, 
which undoubtedly the Evangelists make, that a parable 
is an allegory, a darkening of knowledge and not an 
enlightenment. But Jesus certainly did not mean 
that the most important part of his teaching should 
hide the truth rather than reveal it, and there is every 
reason to suppose that the parable was his ordinary 
way of teaching in the case of his disciples as well as 
of the people. The whole passage to which this inci- 
dent belongs seems to have been due to Mark. In the 
source there apparently was a group of parables here, 
and the last one of them, the parable of the scribe 
instructed into the kingdom, shows that at least they 
were meant for the disciples as much as for the people. 
Mark has broken into this series so that he may give 
an allegorical explanation of one of them : but that it 
is an interruption there are several things which go to 
show. He has to shift the scene in an unnatural way ; 
he is obliged to make up a part of his discourse from 
sayings which belong elsewhere ; the rest of it differs 
decidedly in style from the parables themselves, and in 
the use of such a phrase as the mystery of the kingdom, 
and in the absolute way in which " the word" is used, 
shows a later theological stand-point ; and finally there 
is the mistaken idea as to what a parable is. In many 
cases no doubt it is not hard to give the parable an 



204 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

allegorical turn, but this is always arbitrary, and it 
always runs the risk by its attention to details of losing 
the real point of the parable itself. Even in the par- 
able of the sower, where it is easiest of all, Mark has 
to interpret the seed, sometimes as the word of preach- 
ing, and sometimes as the hearer ; and when we come 
to apply it to the parable of the unjust steward, or of 
the unjust judge, or of the discontented laborers, the 
difficulties are endless. When we find therefore that 
we are getting into allegory, it will make us suspect 
that we have to do, not with Jesus' own words, but 
with the words of the Evangelist instead. When this 
is something which is added to a parable of Jesus' own 
it usually is not difficult to detect. There is for ex- 
ample the allegory of the wedding-garment which is 
attached to the parable of the marriage feast ; not 
only does this add an incongruous idea to a parable 
which is already complete, and which has a perfectly 
plain and simple meaning, but Luke knows nothing 
about it. And in the same parable the ' ' certain man ' ' 
of Luke has been changed into a king, who makes a 
marriage feast for his son, the Messiah, whose servants, 
the prophets, are killed and beaten, and who sends out 
his armies to ' ' destroy those murderers and burn up 
their city," an obvious reference to the Jews and to 
Jerusalem. In the parable of the talents, on the other 
hand, Luke has been the offender, and has brought in 
a motiveless allusion to Archelaus. When it is the 
whole parable that is at fault we perhaps cannot speak 
so confidently, and yet here again we usually do not 
have to hesitate very long. The best example of this 
is the parable of the wicked husbandmen, which from 
beginning to end is nothing but an allegory. But even 
apart from the fact that it is an allegory there are many 



The Preparation. 205 

grounds for suspecting it. Surely a parable which 
assumes that Jesus had been slain, just as the prophets 
had been slain, is more natural in the mouth of a dis- 
ciple after Jesus' death than it is in the mouth of Jesus 
himself, while he was still alive. Jesus is spoken of, 
too, in an unusual way as the Son of God, and we seem 
even to get an echo of the fact that he was put to death 
without the city, when it is said that the husbandmen 
" cast him out of the vineyard and slew him." And 
the parable violates another canon besides : it is forced 
and unnatural, while Jesus' parables are always true to 
life. An allegory has indeed to be unnatural, for the 
details do not of their own accord fall into place, and 
it is necessary to force them in ; and so here we find 
the husbandmen pursuing a design which is quite 
absurd, and we find the owner of the vineyard acting in 
a way in which no one ever would have acted, only that 
the allegory may be kept up. This is not at all Jesus' 
method ; Jesus does not manufacture his parables, they 
are revealed to him. And wherever we meet with a 
made-up story, the likelihood is that it must be rejected. 
And before we leave the matter of the parables, a 
word ought to be said about the three long parables 
which are peculiar to Luke, the parables of the prodi- 
gal son, the good Samaritan, and the rich man and 
Lazarus. Parables we call them, but strictly they are 
not parables after all ; they differ essentially from the 
most of Jesus' parables. Instead of expressing a spirit- 
ual truth in a natural analogy, they are simply illus- 
trations of a truth by a fictitious example. Cases of 
something of the same sort are to be found in the better 
attested discourses, and the story of the unforgiving 
debtor, for example, does not differ materially from the 
story of the prodigal son ; but such instances are rare, 



206 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

and nothing indeed is quite parallel to the stories of the 
good Samaritan and of L,azarus. Moreover, all the 
three narratives have certain peculiarities about them, 
in the manner of narration, which serve to set them off 
by themselves apart from the other discourses of Jesus. 
A suspicion about them, therefore, inevitably arises, 
not simply because they stand in a measure by them- 
selves, but because this difference from Jesus' ordinary 
manner only appears in the late and untrustworthy tra- 
dition which is represented by L,uke. And against 
each of these three stories there are special grounds 
of objection. The introduction to the story of the 
Samaritan is constructed out of an incident which in 
its original form had an entirely different turn ;' the 
story of the prodigal son appears to be based upon a 
much simpler parable in Matthew, the parable of the 
two sons ; and the story of L,azarus, besides being in- 
troduced by sayings which did not at first belong to it, 
is very obscure, and just what it teaches is a puzzle. 
From the final sentence we should think that it was 
meant to show the validity of the L,aw of Moses ; and 
yet this sentence only is tacked on to the end of the 
story, without receiving any proof or illustration from 
it, and might quite as well have stood alone. The whole 
thing cannot readily be made to teach anything except 
the virtue of poverty and the damnableness of wealth. 
The beauty of the first two stories is undeniable, but 
their beauty is not lessened if they come from some 
one else than Jesus ; and of course it would be very 
easy for anything of the kind to get attributed to Jesus 
when its real origin was forgotten. 

If we turn back now to the point from which we 
started, the parable of the lost sheep, the comparison 

1 See Matt. 22 : i\ff. 



The Preparation. 207 

will suggest another caution, that the applications of 
the parables are much more likely to be the work of 
the Evangelists than of Jesus, and that the Evangelists 
are by no means certain to be right. When the first 
Evangelist converts the sign of Jonah into a prediction 
of the resurrection, we have a striking example of this 
in a little different field, but less apparent examples are 
scattered through the Gospels. " Or else," says Jesus 
in the parable of the warring kings, ' ' while the other 
is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage and 
asketh conditions of peace ' ' ; and the Evangelist adds, 
1 ' So, therefore, whosoever he be of you that renounc- 
eth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple," — 
here the application seems to be connected with the 
Evangelist's peculiar views about poverty. In general 
it seems plain that Jesus left his hearers to make their 
application for themselves, and when we find the moral 
given too expressly we must be suspicious of it. And 
somewhat in line with this there are likely to be a num- 
ber of cases where, without any external mark of it, 
the Evangelist has modified what he has before him in 
a greater or less degree. Such cases cannot be classi- 
fied, and no absolute demonstration can be given for 
them ; much will have to be left to the feeling of the 
reader. There is the quotation in the Sermon on the 
Mount which Jesus makes from the Old Testament, 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and" — so Matthew 
adds — "hate thine enemy." But this of course we 
shall not find in the Old Testament, and, moreover, the 
contrast in Jesus' thought is not between hating our 
enemies and loving them, but between loving our 
friends and loving our enemies as well, between partial 
and universal love : may we not venture therefore to 
throw the last clause out of Jesus' words ? Sometimes 



2o8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

the insertion lias been a more important one than this. 
In the discourse about John, for instance, there is a 
sentence in which Jesus speaks of John as fulfilling a 
prophecy in Isaiah. But if we drop this out and notice 
how closely the parts on either side of it fit together — 
"yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. 
Among those born of women there hath not arisen a 
greater," — it will seem most likely that some Evangelist 
on his own notion has thrust in this prophecy which 
the Church had found for John. For it is to take all 
the meaning out of Jesus' words to make him put 
John's greatness simply in the fact that he had an- 
nounced the immediate coming of the Messiah. And 
still another instance is that most violent of all the 
words attributed to Jesus, ' ' ye serpents, ye offspring 
of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Ge- 
henna ! ' ' which in this case betrays itself by its de- 
pendence on the words of the Baptist. 

It is evident therefore that to determine just what 
Jesus said is not a work which can be done off-hand ; 
it requires a continual weighing and sifting. And there 
is a special danger from the fact that Jesus is so far 
above his hearers, that just so soon as they leave the 
task simply of reporting word for word what Jesus 
said, they are pretty certain to bring their own mis- 
conceptions in. We constantly shall find upon the 
same subject views attributed to Jesus which are mutu- 
ally inconsistent, a spiritual view, and a materialistic, 
Jewish view, and we shall have to choose between 
them. And this furnishes one other rule of interpre- 
tation : whenever we find that this is the case, the 
probabilities in so far lie with the more spiritual view. 
Jesus we know in many things did rise far above his 
contemporaries ; it is more likely therefore that his 



The Preparation. 209 

reporters have brought him down to their own level 
than that they have been able to rise above "him. It is 
true that we cannot assume this without question in 
every case ; only the evidence for a belief which puts 
Jesus below his own general level must needs be 
stronger than that which would satisfy us in the case 
of a belief which harmonizes with Jesus' other teach- 
ings. And upon this principle of course we must al- 
ways go, that what is uncertain must be judged by 
what is sure. There are some things in Jesus' teaching 
which we can establish beyond a doubt, and other 
things must be at least in a measure consistent with 
these. To establish anything upon a single saying, or 
even to establish it upon two or three sayings, will be 
hazardous, unless the genuineness of these sayings is 
pretty certain. With these things in mind therefore 
we shall try to bring into order the somewhat chaotic 
condition of the Gospels, and to determine in their 
main outlines what the essential points in Jesus' doc- 
trine were. 




CHAPTER II. 

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVKN. 

WHAT then was the sum of Jesus' teaching ? 
What lay at the centre of the announcement 
which he had to make to his nation ? Mark, 
as it seems, was the first to give a literary form to 
this : Jesus, he says, came into Galilee preaching the 
Gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and 
the kingdom of God is at hand ; repent ye, and be- 
lieve in the Gospel. Now certainly Jesus did not use 
these very words, and the passage only pretends to be a 
summary of his message ; but to this extent undoubtedly 
Mark is right, that it is the kingdom of heaven 
which Jesus came to proclaim. But Mark also gives 
us the impression which, knowing nothing to the 
contrary, would be the natural view to hold, that Jesus' 
attitude towards the kingdom was essentially the 
attitude of his nation, an attitude to which the national, 
the political features were by no means unimportant, 
even if they did not occupy the foremost place. Cer- 
tainly if Jesus had made his announcement in this bald 
way the people could have got no other notion from it, 
and if he had announced it as something which was 
at hand, as something coming in the future, the 
inference would be the same. But Mark's statement in 

2IO 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 1 

itself has no value, for it is dependent on the words of 
John the Baptist ; and if we look at the actual say- 
ings of Jesus we shall see at once that, whatever his 
idea of the kingdom may have been, it differed greatly 
from the idea which his countrymen had of it. 

By far the most complete statement which Jesus 
makes of his position is to be found in the Sermon on 
the Mount, and indeed it would seem that Jesus here 
intended to give in a brief form the substance of his 
teaching about the kingdom. The discourse was 
spoken to the disciples, as all the internal evidence goes 
to show, and it probably belongs to the latter part of 
Jesus' ministry ; for so long a sermon could not easily 
have been remembered when the disciples were 
new to Jesus' teaching. Unfortunately, we do not 
now have this discourse in its original form, as a com- 
parison of Matthew and of Luke will soon convince 
one. Luke has abbreviated constantly by leaving out 
those sayings which have reference to Jewish customs 
and beliefs, and what he has retained he often has 
paraphrased very freely ; while Matthew in his usual 
fashion has interwoven with it sayings which at first 
were quite distinct. But many of these sayings are 
still to be found in Luke in a far better connection, 
and by a careful comparison it is possible to restore 
within reasonable limits the discourse as it stood origi- 
nally. It appears to start with that Luke, apart from 
the Woes, which he certainly adds on his own account, 
has the Beatitudes in a more original form. Luke's 
version of them is so consistent that it is hard to think 
he got it by mutilating the longer form in Matthew, 
while Matthew on the other hand is not quite con- 
gruous throughout, he borrows liberally from the Old 
Testament, and his changes are easily to be explained 



212 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

on the basis of a simpler account. The first Beatitude in 
particular, despite the efforts to find a profound mean- 
ing in it, is not a natural expression, as the very neces- 
sity for these efforts shows, and it is easily accounted 
for as a somewhat mechanical addition to the ' ' poor ' ' 
of Luke. Then, too, the second Beatitude Matthew 
has been forced to leave without spiritualizing it. 
Besides, the direct address, ' ' Blessed are ye, ' ' is proven 
at any rate for the last Beatitude, so that the tenth 
verse in Matthew is a repetition which is due to him ; 
and the way in which the Sermon goes on in Matthew 
shows that Jesus is speaking to his disciples directly. 
From this point, however, there is little to do except to 
throw out those sayings which have a better connec- 
tion in Luke. These are the sayings about salt, where 
the warning is not called for by the context, about the 
adversary and about divorce, the ford's prayer, the 
discourse about laying up treasure, and all that follows 
it through the warnings against anxiety. Then the 
saying about pearls before swine, while it is not found 
in Luke, hardly belongs here, for it breaks into the 
connection ; and the two discourses about seeking 
and finding, and about the narrow way, also find their 
place in Luke. Again in Luke the last part of the 
Sermon — Luke 6 : 43-45 — seems to follow the original 
more closely than Matthew does, for Matthew makes 
these words refer to false prophets, which is contrary 
to the whole meaning of the discourse. Jesus has 
been referring throughout to personal conduct, he ends 
with a reference to personal conduct, and it must be of 
the same thing that he is speaking here. And this is 
shown also by the literary structure of Matthew. 
Luke reads :"A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt 
fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 3 

For every tree is known by its own fruit. For of 
thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble 
bush gather they grapes. ' ' Matthew, on account of his 
reference to false prophets, starts with ' ' Ye shall know 
them by their fruits." Then he goes back to the verse 
he has omitted, but after it he again repeats, " By their 
fruits ye shall know them, " just as it is found in Luke ; 
so that this seems to be the right place for the saying. 
Now if we examine carefully the discourse which 
we have left after this critical process, it will be found 
that there is one very definite conception which domi- 
nates the whole of it, which Jesus insists upon, and 
which he says expressly is the crucial point in the rela- 
tion of the citizen to the new kingdom. The kingdom 
implies of course the rule of God, but it is a govern- 
ment which has absolutely nothing external about it, 
which is directed towards the heart and conscience of 
the individual citizen, which aims, not to bring about 
outward conformity simply, but comformity which is 
due to character, and which in every detail rests 
squarely upon the great, and to Jesus the self-evident 
principles of righteousness. Do not be angry, be for- 
giving, avoid lustful thoughts, be scrupulously truth- 
ful, return good for evil, love your enemies, avoid pride 
and ostentation, be merciful and charitable in judg- 
ment ; it is by your fruits that you will be judged, he 
who follows these commandments of mine is the wise 
man, he who neglects them the fool, — from beginning 
to end a single note runs through the whole, it is in 
this the kingdom consists, and there is no hint that it 
consists in anything else. If one were to put it in a 
single sentence it would be something like this — the 
kingdom of heaven is the rule of righteousness in 
human life, when righteousness is not looked at as 



2 1 4 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

something external, but as the natural fruits of a 
heart that is governed by love to God and love to men. 
If this really is the heart of Jesus' idea of the king- 
dom, when we take into account all that it implies it is 
far and away the greatest achievement in religious 
thought which the world has witnessed. That Jesus 
should have held so tenaciously to the elements of real 
and permanent religious value for which the human 
heart can never cease to crave, and that he yet should 
have been able to free these so effectually from the 
extra-beliefs, the transient forms by which men's fan- 
cies have tried to picture to themselves the eternal veri- 
ties of which dimly and partially they had caught a 
glimpse, and should have brought out into a clear light 
their intimate and absolutely essential relationship to 
conduct, would be a marvel in any case, and it is the 
more marvellous when we consider how absolutely for- 
eign it all was to the Judaism of the times.- Indeed, 
even to the present day the Church has not been able 
to convince itself that religion, if it is to be secure, 
does not need the extra support of all these appeals to 
the imagination and the material sense. Most of all, 
men constantly are clamoring for something in religion 
which shall serve to guarantee for them their own hap- 
piness and safety, and the closer they can cling to the 
solid foundation of a sensible earth, the better they are 
pleased. Accordingly, in Jesus' day, the great mass 
of the people were for having an earthly kingdom, 
with plenty to eat and drink, a king with supernatural 
powers enough to insure their getting the better of 
their enemies, and a certain amount of worship and 
morality, no doubt, somewhere in the background. 
From this it is a long ways, certainly, to the ordinary 
conception of Christianity, and yet something of the 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 215 

same mistake there is in both : both, that is, put reli- 
gion too much in the idea of the reward attached to it 
from the outside. In Christianity this appears in the 
altogether disproportionate place which is given to the 
doctrine of heaven. This is what the kingdom of 
heaven early came to stand for : it was taken to mean 
a future kingdom into which death alone can bring us, 
heaven, shut off by the sharpest boundaries from the 
things of earth. Now, without doubt, there is much 
in this conception which answers to a real religious 
need, and which we could ill afford to do without. We 
need the comfort of looking to the future, when the 
conditions which hem us in and thwart us, and so often 
render wickedness triumphant and goodness impotent, 
shall be done away, when joy shall take the place of 
sadness, and that harmony which we crave in vain in 
our present life shall be a thing accomplished. But 
then, this is not the whole of religion, and it is not the 
core of it, and by putting the first emphasis upon it, it 
may lead to a religion which is very faulty and per- 
verted. And this always has been the tendency in 
human thought. Religion has been made to gather 
about the soul's salvation, salvation, that is, in this 
narrow sense, of escape from punishment and the get- 
ting of a heavenly reward. Duty, conduct, character, 
have been hardly more than a road to heaven and 
eternal happiness. But it is clear that this hope, just 
of getting into heaven, unless it is bound up very 
closely indeed with the thought of the sort of character 
which heaven implies, is only a selfish hope, none the 
less selfish, only a bit more etherialized, because the 
objects of its desire are after death rather than before 
it. And selfishness is not religion. God is not God, 
truth is not truth, goodness is not goodness, simply 



216 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

that you and I may be forever happy. It may be that 
God would not be God if there were not true and last- 
ing joy within the reach of men, but at least the em- 
phasis must not be put upon the wrong side. Now, 
this is what, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus 
appears to recognize and teach : God, righteousness, — 
these are first and foremost. Blessedness they do in- 
deed bring with them, but it is not the blessedness 
which gives to them their worth, and it is only by 
striving after them for their own sakes that the blessed- 
ness will come. Jesus' kingdom is a kingdom which 
rests upon character. It is the bringing into the indi- 
vidual and into the universal life the eternal principles 
of righteousness. It is the joyful recognition of these, 
not simply as leading to my happiness, but as in them- 
selves eternally worthy and binding. It is the swallow- 
ing up of the selfish will in the will of God, and the 
recognition that God's will is not something vague and 
belonging to another world than this, but that it un- 
folds itself in the ordinary human relations and duties. 
It is human society become divine by having all the 
selfishness in it rooted out, and God's will recognized 
freely by each individual. 

But it may be said that the Sermon on the Mount 
does not necessarily imply all this, or at least that it 
does not imply this conception so exclusively. For one 
may still insist with all strenuousness upon the need 
of character, and yet make the kingdom itself to con- 
sist in some more outward and sensible relationship 
between God and men. This was true of John, for 
example. No man yielded to John in the assertion of 
the supremacy of righteousness, and yet to him the 
kingdom was not come till the sinners were weeded 
out of the nation and the Messiah had appeared, a 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 7 

visible representative of God's sway. So in Jesus' 
case it may have been that, while he set up conduct as 
an absolute necessity for the citizen, he nevertheless 
b)' the kingdom itself meant not this only, but a special 
and supernatural relationship into which God was to 
enter with men, either a supra-mundane, heavenly con- 
summation, when the principles which he had laid 
down were to be completely victorious, or it may be 
even an earthly realization of a completely righteous 
nation, perhaps established by a special display of 
God's power. Both of these suppositions, in so far as 
they involve a supernatural intervention, we shall have 
to consider more at length in another chapter, when we 
come to ask what Jesus expected of the future of his 
kingdom. For the present, just a word may be suffi- 
cient. It is often said that the two conceptions, the 
thought of the kingdom as the natural growth of men 
in their individual lives and their social relations into 
the divine character, and as the consummation of all 
things in a society under supernatural conditions, are 
not mutually inconsistent, but are only the two parts 
of one conception. This claim, however, is only 
partially true. No doubt it is a fact that Jesus be- 
lieved in what we may call by the name of Heaven. 
Nevertheless, heaven stands first of all for the idea of 
happiness, of rest and peace after the conflict of life, 
of the satisfaction of human cravings, and as such it 
is entirely distinct from the idea of righteousness and 
its authoritative claims, which, from the nature of the 
case, we can represent only under the form of the hu- 
man relationships and duties which we are familiar 
with. Accordingly, while one may hold the two ideas 
together and find in one the supplement of the other, 
yet they are two ideas after all, and it is not easy to 



2 1 8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

combine them into one definite conception without 
slighting the one or the other. And it makes all the 
difference in the world whether religion is made to 
centre first of all about the future, or about the every- 
day duties of the present. And all that we are trying 
to maintain is that, while Jesus recognized hope for the 
future as a legitimate incentive and consolation, he did 
not lay the stress of his teaching upon this, but made 
it to centre about conduct and character for this present 
world ; and this is what we think the Sermon on the 
Mount tends to show. This, however, we shall return 
to later. But apart from all question of the super- 
natural, it will be necessary to take a somewhat more 
extended survey of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom 
with reference to the charge which often has been 
brought against him, and which has, perhaps, not been 
sufficiently replied to as yet, that, after all, though doubt- 
less with the best and most patriotic of intentions, politi- 
cal motives did have some weight with him, and that 
his hope for a righteous nation was somehow or other 
connected with the deliverance of Israel from the adverse 
external conditions with which it was struggling. 

As against any such political aim on Jesus' part, the 
very name which he chooses is significant. According 
to Mark and Luke it is the kingdom of God, but Mat- 
thew has it, the kingdom of heaven. It is not probable 
that both names were used as the ordinary designation, 
and from critical reasons, as well as from historical, 
Matthew is probably to be preferred. In one verse at 
least — Matt. 7 : 21 — "heaven " seems to be required by 
the parallelism of the sentence ; and in another case — 
21 : 43 — Matthew himself has "kingdom of God," and 
he has it in a verse which seems to be due to himself. 
So that it is not probable that he would have changed 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 1 9 

"God" to "heaven" wherever he found it in his 
source, and then have used " God " himself where no 
change would have been necessary. But ' ' the king- 
dom of heaven " is just such a title as we might have 
expected one to use who wished to dissociate his king- 
dom as much as possible from all earthly empire, and 
point to it simply as a divine ideal to be realized among 
men. And then the kingdom — so Jesus implies at the 
beginning of the Sermon on the Mount — was something 
which was intended to bring joy, blessedness, and to 
bring it into the lives of those who stood most in need 
of it, of the poor, the wretched, whom religion, as well 
as philosophy and culture, had hitherto been very apt 
to neglect. One who had come to announce the restora- 
tion of the national greatness, the approach of a time 
when the religion of their ancestors might be enjoyed 
free of disturbance, never would have spoken first of 
all in this way. This tenderness towards the weak 
ones of mankind, and the confidence that he has that 
which will fill the void in their lives, is one of the 
striking things in Jesus' teaching : but he always rep- 
resents this ministry as a moral one ; he has come to 
heal the sick who need a physician ; and he never re- 
gards this as a means, as a reform of the nation which 
will allow the political ideal to be realized, but as the 
end in itself. He that is but little in the kingdom of 
heaven, he says, is greater than John, and this has no 
meaning unless the greatness of the kingdom is solely 
a spiritual greatness, an eminence in spiritual knowl- 
edge and achievement. And indeed in so many words 
Jesus puts the kingdom and righteousness together, 
as if they were one and the same thing, and sharply 
distinguishes them from other, from material things. 1 
1 Matt. 6 : 33. 



220 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

And once again, in the prayer which he makes, the 
kingdom is to come when God's will is done on earth. 
It is the innocence and the humility of the child which 
is the necessary condition of entrance. The harvest is 
to be reaped, not by the expulsion of the Romans and 
the setting up of a kingdom of the saints, but by the 
work of the laborers who are to be sent forth into the 
harvest, among the people. The Pharisees, Jesus com- 
plains, have shut up the kingdom of heaven against 
men, and not content with refusing to enter in them- 
selves, they have kept out those who were on the point 
of entering. If already they have done this, the king- 
dom already is established, and their fault is that they 
have refused to see it in the righteousness which Jesus 
preached. And indeed Jesus tells them on another 
occasion that while they are looking for some outward 
demonstration to which they can point and say, L,o 
here, or I^o there, the kingdom already has sprung up 
silently in their midst. 

An ideal such as this certainly has very little in com- 
mon with political aims of any sort, indeed it seems 
entirely to exclude them ; and there are other sayings 
of Jesus which establish this still more securely. The 
recognition of the kingdom and its Messiah, so Jesus 
tells Peter, does not belong to flesh and blood, and, 
therefore, it must be something which is purely spirit- 
ual, and has nothing to do with earthly things. If 
Iyuke is to be trusted, we find Jesus expressly re- 
jecting the function which would have been proper to 
him as the Messiah of the popular kingdom, the func- 
tion of judge and divider, and he certainly declines to 
have anything to do with the question which, if in any 
sense his aim had been political, he must have attached 
some importance to, the relation in which the country 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 2 2 1 

stood to Caesar and the Roman government. Still, one 
has to recognize two or three elements in the Gospels 
which seem to go against this view, and to show that 
Jesus after all was not wholly untouched by the popular 
ideals. One thing indeed which might be used to show 
this, does really, we think, point the other way, the 
promise which Jesus makes to his disciples, seemingly 
a political promise, that they shall sit on twelve thrones 
judging the twelve tribes of Israel. If this really was 
spoken by Jesus, and was meant to be understood liter- 
ally, then Jesus must have thought of a political eman- 
cipation, however this emancipation was to be brought 
about. But if this imagery is to be taken literally, it 
stands very nearly alone among Jesus' sayings, and 
that fact by itself would almost be enough to show the 
saying was not genuine ; and so soon as we get it in 
its right connection we shall see that there is no need 
of its being taken literally at all. The connection 
which Matthew gives to it is hardly possible, for it 
seems clearly to be thrust in between Peter's question 
and the real answer which was given to that question. 1 
But Iyuke places it at the end of a discourse, the dis- 
course on ambition, which, as the other Evangelists 
show, was called forth by a request which James and 
John had made ; and here it fits in admirably. James 
and John had come to Jesus asking for the chief places 
in the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom which they still 
looked upon as something material ; and Jesus' words 
on the occasion are significant. He does not say that 
hereafter the chief place shall be given to him who 
deserves it best by his service, that humility and self- 
sacrifice now shall be exchanged for honor and posi- 
tion when the kingdom is established : he says that 
1 Matt. 19 : 28. 



222 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

humility is greatness, that the chief place consists in 
being the servant of all. And then, when immedi- 
ately he promises to the Twelve the greatness which 
James and John had just been seeking, we only can 
interpret this by what Jesus himself has said. The great- 
ness which he promises to them is the greatness of ser- 
vice ; it is the superiority which comes from doing and 
from suffering the most, the superiority which Jesus 
himself had won ; and the form in which he puts this 
probably was suggested by the brothers' question. 
This, we think therefore, shows what we have found 
was shown by other things, that Jesus' conception of 
the kingdom was wholly spiritual ; there are two 
things, however, which cannot easily be explained in 
this way and which apparently show a very different 
point of view, and these are the mission of the twelve 
Apostles, and the entry into Jerusalem. 

With regard to the mission of the disciples it is hard 
to see how, under the circumstances, it could have 
failed to have a very conspicuous political significance. 
In the first place the disciples themselves thought of 
the kingdom much as the people thought of it, and as 
yet were far from comprehending the real bearing of 
Jesus' conception. And even if they partly had under- 
stood him, the people could not have done so ; to them 
the disciples' words only could have had one meaning. 
And then when we ask in what the disciples' message 
consisted we meet with difficulty. If apart from Jesus' 
teachings about the kingdom they pointed to Jesus as 
the Messiah, they simply were sowing the seeds of 
revolution ; and even if they did not do this expressly, 
if, as is hardly conceivable, they confined themselves 
to the bare statement that the kingdom was at hand, 
the result still would have been very much the same. 



The Kingdom of Heaven, 223 

For both the kingdom and the Messiahship were to the 
Jewish mind indissolubly bound up with the thought 
of political change, and if Jesus' purpose was to rid the 
ideal of the kingdom of its political features, the worst 
thing he could do would be to sow broadcast hopes 
which only would stand in the way of the fulfilment 
of his designs. Jesus could not well have failed to see 
this, and if in spite of it the disciples were sent out, the 
easiest explanation is that, disappointed at his slow 
progress, he had determined to arouse the popular 
enthusiasm and to make use of it to promote his aims. 
But this it is hard to believe, for not only is it utterly 
opposed to the view of the kingdom which Jesus' own 
words make it almost certain that he held, but it is 
opposed to the fact that even after Jesus' appearance 
at Jerusalem his enemies had no proof that he claimed 
to be the Messiah. The whole incident therefore, we 
should doubt, even if we had no other reasons to ap- 
peal to ; but other reasons are by no means lacking. 

If we examine the speech which is attributed to 
Jesus on this occasion, there is a curious thing that 
will be noticed about it. Of all the sayings of which 
the speech is made up, there is not a single one against 
which plausible objections cannot be brought. We do 
not mean to say that all of these objections are equally 
strong, or that by themselves the sayings might not 
possibly be vindicated for Jesus ; only when we find 
that all of them may be objected to, the defence that 
can be made for each one of them loses something of 
its force. If we take the speech in order, first there 
comes the injunction not to preach to Gentiles or 
Samaritans. It is not necessary to ask here whether 
this is consistent with Jesus' own views ; we only will 
suggest that the injunction is not likely because it is 



224 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

useless. The disciples never would have thought of 
doing what Jesus commands them not to do ; that they 
were to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel would 
have been the only thing that would have entered their 
minds. On the contrary, the words seem to imply a 
time when missions to the Gentiles and to the Samari- 
tans were not unheard of, or else the prohibition of 
them seems unintelligible, not the time of Jesus there- 
fore, but later times after the Church had been estab- 
lished. The difficulty of the announcement which 
they were to make already has been touched upon. 
The difficulty vanishes if we do not try to account for 
the narrative as a real event, but suppose that, when 
the labors of the Apostles had become familiar, this 
activity of theirs was carried back into the times of 
Jesus, and they were thought of as sent out by Jesus 
to preach his Messiahship, just as they really did go 
out in later times. And then an ideal speech that 
suited the occasion was put in Jesus' mouth, as in the 
book of Acts speeches are put in the mouths of the 
Apostles. 

The next saying, in the form in which it is given in 
Matthew, is clearly an impossibility : " Heal the sick, 
cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons." 
But this it is likely is not the original form, and if we 
drop the two middle clauses we shall probably have the 
sentence as it stood at first ; for this is all that the 
other Evangelists know of, the healing of the sick and 
the casting out of demons. But even in this simple 
form the saying is doubtful enough, for we have al- 
ready shown that the other sayings attributed to Jesus 
in behalf of miracles are to be rejected. And it is very 
easy to see how a later writer, who believed in the 
Apostles' miracles, should infer that the power had 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 225 

been formally bestowed upon them by Jesus, — easier 
by all means than it is to think of Jesus as really doing 
this. The next sentence also is better suited to later 
times than it is to the times of Jesus. Certainly this 
entire absence of self-support would be more natural 
for itinerant teachers in communities where already 
there were Christian families to aid them, than it 
would be in wholly new fields ; and the injunction 
which comes just after, to seek out a worthy family and 
there abide, also suggests this, for it only would be 
with a co-religionist that a stranger could count so 
securely on a continued welcome. Nor is this anxiety 
that the disciples should be supported by the commu- 
nity, that they should not even use the money they 
possessed, quite worthy of Jesus ; it would seem to 
point rather to a time when the support of itinerant 
preachers had become an ecclesiastical question. 

Jesus next goes on to give directions as to the atti- 
tude which the disciples are to bear towards their 
hearers. These directions are somewhat trivial, and 
are scarcely of the sort which one would suppose the 
disciples would have needed most ; and the whole 
passage does not impress us as being in the spirit of 
Jesus. I^east of all is it like Jesus to encourage the 
impatience of his disciples, to tell them to shake 
off the dust of their feet against those who will 
not hear them ; and the comparison with Sodom 
shocks us by its quite uncalled-for severity. And 
indeed this saying is taken from another dis- 
course by Jesus, from the woes against the Gali- 
lean cities, and even here it seems to have been added 
by the Evangelist, to correspond with the saying 
which goes just before, " It shall be more tolerable for 
Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you." 



226 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 

But in this connection the severity is justified, for 
Jesus is speaking of the cities to which he had 
devoted the greater part of his ministry ; in our passage 
however the words are spoken of cities which only 
were to receive a flying visit from a disciple, and 
which, if they rejected his message, did not by any 
means reject the truth which Chorazin and Caper- 
naum had rejected. But this is easy to understand 
from a disciple who had in his thoughts a rejection 
of the Gospel which had followed years of teaching 
by the Apostles. And pointing to the same thing is 
the impression which one gets from our passage of a 
more extended ministry than would have been possible 
in Jesus' lifetime. The disciples are to go from city to 
city, they are to stay in each till their message has 
been accepted or until it has been rejected. But this 
could not happen all at once, and our passage implies 
as much when it assumes that the disciples will be 
tempted to move about from house to house. Such a 
prolonged ministry in Jesus' lifetime is unlikely ; what 
the disciples needed was not practice in preaching but 
the companionship of Jesus, and an opportunity them- 
selves to learn, and Jesus hardly would have ventured 
to assign them such an errand until they were better 
prepared for it. In the same direction, too, points 
the fact that they are warned against dangers, they 
are sent out as sheep into the midst of wolves. But 
dangers only came at a later time, and Jesus could not 
have anticipated danger in such a mission as this. 
And then the speech closes with a threat— Luke prob- 
ably has retained this more correctly — " Whoso re- 
ceiveth you receiveth me, and whoso rejecteth you, 
rejecteth me, and whoso rejecteth me rejecteth him 
that sent me." Matthew has added a saying peculiar 



The Kingdom of Heaven. 227 

to himself, and he has made the whole into a promise 
to those who should receive the disciples ; but the 
objection to this is that the promises are made to 
persons who are absent, and have no relation to the 
disciples, to whom the words are immediately ad- 
dressed. And this last sentence also calls up objec- 
tions ; to say nothing of the fact that it implies Jesus' 
relationship to God in a way in which Jesus very 
seldom speaks of it, it is not even just, for it is not 
true that a rejection of the disciples under these cir- 
cumstances would in any sense have been a rejection 
of the truth for which Jesus stood. 

For all these reasons we do not hesitate to reject the 
whole account, and still less do we hesitate to reject 
the account of the entry into Jerusalem. This too 
is unintelligible apart from some political aim. What 
possible pleasure could Jesus take in the shouts of a 
fanatical rabble, if the dignity which they claimed for 
him was something utterly opposed to what he was 
seeking to obtain ? Could he really not forego the 
gratification of this bit of triumph under false pre- 
tences before his final failure ? But to this narrative 
the same objections apply which applied to the other : 
it is not like Jesus, and it would have put an end to 
any uncertainty which the Pharisees felt about his 
claims to the Messiahship. And in itself the narrative 
has very little in its favor : the miracle with which it 
opens, its evident and minute dependence upon the 
Old Testament, the manifest motive there was for it 
in the glorification of Jesus, all tell against it. And 
probably the immediate occasion for it we have in the 
words with which Jesus is welcomed by the multitude. 
Already in a saying which had been attributed to 
Jesus he had said, ' ' Ye shall not see me until ye say, 



228 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ' ' ; 
and now that he actually was to enter the city, must 
not the people have met him with these words ? We 
find therefore no reason to alter the opinion which we 
reached before, or to think that Jesus' conception of 
the kingdom had in it the smallest political element. 




CHAPTER III. 

THK MKSSIAHSHIP OF JESUS. 

IN the conclusion which has been reached about the 
form which the conception of the kingdom took in 
Jesus' mind, a good deal is already implied with 
regard to the idea which he had of the Messiah of that 
kingdom, If the kingdom is a purely spiritual one, 
a kingdom of righteousness, then at one blow all the 
adventitious dignity of the popular Messiah, the earthly 
glory, the seat on the throne of David, become a mat- 
ter of perfect indifference. When this is granted, how- 
ever, there still is a considerable amount of perplexity 
attaching to the subject, and the difficulty may be 
summed up with sufficient accuracy in the two ques- 
tions, What part did Jesus' Messiahship play in his 
dealings with the people ? and, Just how did it present 
itself to his own consciousness, and how did he speak 
of it in his communications with his chosen disciples ? 
These two questions play into each other more or less, 
and the answer to one of them suggests the answer to 
the other, but nevertheless, they are distinct enough to 
make it convenient to consider them apart. 

It ordinarily is assumed that the fact of Jesus' 
Messiahship had a prominent place, if not the most 
prominent, in his own consciousness, and that the 

229 



230 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

recognition of this Messiahship was the objective 
point towards which all his efforts were directed. And 
undoubtedly this is the idea which is present in our 
sources. It is easy to see how such a belief got to pre- 
vail : the idea of Jesus as the Messiah was the central 
thing in the preaching of the Apostles, among whom 
Jesus' conception of righteousness, while it influenced 
their lives and their incidental teachings profoundly, 
never was able to assume the central place in their 
theories of religion, and compete in the line of doctrine 
and theology with their earlier Jewish conceptions ; 
and accordingly it would seem quite natural that Jesus 
should work to get this belief fixed in the people's 
minds, that he should send his disciples out to spread 
it everywhere and make it familiar, and should encour- 
age it wherever it appeared. Nevertheless, there are 
serious difficulties in the way of this manner of con- 
ceiving Jesus' ministry which have not always been 
regarded. It is certain that to the minds of the people 
such an announcement must have conveyed a notion 
which differed totally from that which Jesus had him- 
self, and which promoted just the error which proved 
one of the greatest stumbling-blocks in his ministry, 
and against which he had constantly to be fighting. 
Moreover, it is idle to suppose that any man could 
have been the centre of Messianic hopes for so long a 
time, and still have aroused no sort of opposition from 
the watchful Roman authorities. The first of these 
difficulties indeed usually receives a half-way recogni- 
tion, but the attempt to mend things only makes the 
matter worse. In order to harmonize all the points of 
view which make their appearance in the Gospels, 
Jesus is made to blow hot and cold with the same 
breath ; he lets the belief in his Messiahship spread, 



The Messiahs hip of yesus. 231 

and then tries to work it over into his own conception ; 
he thinks to avoid the complications which result 
simply by refusing to meet the advances of those who 
want to see him accept the popular r61e, while he still 
insists upon the fact of his Messiahship ; by turns he 
tries in some striking way to stimulate belief, by feed- 
ing men miraculously, by riding in triumph into Jeru- 
salem, and then again, to vary matters, he makes 
spasmodic and what must necessarily be quite useless, 
efforts to stem the tide by forbidding the report of 
something which might seem a bid for popular favor. 
But such a veering course as this is quite inexplicable. 
If belief in Jesus as the popular Messiah had been only 
a stepping-stone, a halting-place on the road to the 
belief which Jesus himself wished to inspire, then the 
course would have had its advantages ; but this was 
not the case, and instead of being a help to him it was 
a positive hindrance and a detriment. What Jesus had 
to do then, if we can give him credit for a very moder- 
ate share of clear-sightedness, was to avoid arousing 
hopes which he afterwards would have to be to the 
pains of extinguishing, and from the start to keep the 
question of his Messiahship resolutely in the back- 
ground until men were ready to receive it ; there was 
no keeping it within bounds, if once it were allowed 
to get started at all. This then is what, from a priori 
reasoning, we should expect Jesus to do, and that he 
did do it is shown by the best-attested facts in the Gos- 
pels. Of course there are plenty of statements to the 
contrary, but these must be subjected to a liberal dis- 
count by reason of the obvious influences which were 
at hand to produce them. It would be strange indeed 
if later times had not imported something of its own 
faith into Jesus' words and acts. And it is to be no- 



232 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

ticed that by far the greater number of these cases, 
where Jesus is saluted as the Messiah, or where he acts 
in such a way that his Messiahship is implied, occur 
in the stories of miracles, and so are demonstrated to 
be of later origin. On the other hand, there is to start 
with the account of Peter's confession at Caesarea 
Philippi, which is of capital importance on the ques- 
tion. Here it is distinctly implied that up to this time 
the people had not thought of Jesus as the Messiah, 
but only as some great prophet ; and at the close of 
the account again Jesus strictly forbids that the fact 
should be made known. To this narrative we shall 
have occasion to return again. The name which Jesus 
chooses to designate himself also speaks for the same 
conclusion. It is still an unsettled question whether 
there is any evidence that already in Jesus' day the 
term "Son of man" carried any Messianic signifi- 
cance with it, and in the absence of conclusive proof 
to the contrary the testimony of the Gospels must be 
accepted as decisive. This goes strongly against any 
such notion. In particular, Jesus never could have 
asked the question of his disciples, ' ' Whom do men 
say that the Son of man is ? " and have followed it by 
the second question, ' ' Whom do ye say that I am ? ' ' 
if the answer already was contained in the former 
phrase ; and that this is the real form of the question 
is indicated by Peter's corresponding phrase, " the Son 
of God," apparently a reference to it. The question 
is a harder one just what Jesus himself had in mind 
when he chose the phrase, and it is complicated by the 
fact that the words occur so often in very doubtful pas- 
sages. Most of these passages have already received 
some attention, or else will be treated of before we are 
finished ; without, therefore, going for a second time 



The Mcssiahsh ip of Jesus. 233 



into a detailed criticism, it will be enough to say that 
there are only five places in our opinion where the words 
can be allowed to be genuine. One of these is the case 
just mentioned in the account of Peter's confession ; then 
there are the two sayings, ' ' The Son of man hath not 
where to lay his head," and, "The Son of man came 
eating and drinking," and perhaps the saying about 
the unpardonable sin, and the words which Jesus is 
reported to have spoken at his trial. Reasons will ap- 
pear in another chapter why we do not think it prob- 
able the phrase was taken from the book of Daniel 
and had an apocalyptic sense attached to it ; it will be 
noticed that the passages we have quoted none of them 
point to this, not the last one even when the true read- 
ing is retained. ' It is tempting, when one remembers 
the deep human sympathy of Jesus, and the part which 
it played in the consciousness of his mission, to think 
that this must in some way have lain at the bottom of 
his choice of expression, and two of the passages — 
the others do not give any clear indication one way 
or another — are decidedly in favor of this view. Deeply 
impressed with the sense of his character as the up- 
lifter of humanity, it would be very natural that he 
should catch up an expression which seemed to give 
the essence of his mission so admirably, and which 
already one of the great prophets had used to designate 
himself, without of necessity his giving any special 
thought to what the elder prophet had meant by it. 
And at any rate Ezekiel is the most obvious source to 
which to look for the origin of the phrase, for else- 
where it is by no means so prominent as it is in Ezekiel, 
and nowhere else is it applied, as Jesus applies it, to 
a defin ite person. The fact therefore, to repeat, that 
1 Cf. Luke 22 : 69. 



234 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Jesus chose such a term, and not one which pointed 
clearly to a Messianic dignity, shows that he did not 
wish to insist upon that dignity. Two or three other 
indications also may be briefly mentioned. Jesus does 
on one occasion speak to the people directly about the 
Messiah, but it is to show them how utterly their con- 
ception is in the wrong. If Christ is David's son, 
how then doth David in spirit call him I/Drd, saying, 
The I/)rd said unto my I^ord, Sit thou on my right 
hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool ? Could 
they not see that if the Messiah's dignity was just 
what David's dignity had been, the leadership of a 
material kingdom, David and the Messiah were ex- 
actly on a level ? it was only if the Messianic dignity 
was something higher than this, something in a 
different realm, that David could call him I/>rd. But 
here, unless the impression which the narrative makes 
upon us is totally out of the way, there appears no 
consciousness that the people were likely to apply this 
to himself ; he speaks of the Messiah and of theories 
about the Messiah in a much more impersonal way 
than he could have done if he himself had been a 
prominent candidate before the people. Then again 
in another passage Jesus' opponents ask him what 
authority he has for certain acts of his. The very 
question shows that Jesus had not appeared in the 
character of Messiah, for in that case the authority 
which he claimed would have been evident. And in 
his answer too he does not make this claim ; he declares 
that his authority rests upon the plane on which John's 
rested, the authority of truth everywhere against error 
and falsehood, and that, if they will not recognize such 
authority, he has none of the palpable evidence which 
they demand. And of some weight too is the fact that 



The Messiahship of Jesus. 235 

when Jesus' enemies finally set about his destruction 
and tried to involve him in political complications, 
they found it impossible to get hold of any proof 
against him. 

According to the Gospels, just before Jesus was put 
to death, when he was undergoing his trial, he did de- 
clare openly to his judges the truth of what they were 
trying to establish against him. It is not clear how 
much authority can be given to this statement, but 
there is nothing very improbable about it. Jesus saw 
that his death was determined on, and his words no 
longer could arouse false expectations ; to refuse now 
to speak might seem to him cowardice rather than 
prudence. But this implies that in a real sense Jesus 
did look upon himself as the Messiah, and we may 
now turn to the more important question as to just 
what emphasis he put upon the fact in his own mind. 
For the most part the belief prevails that he brought 
it very emphatically to the foreground, that he made 
altogether startling claims for himself and placed his 
own person at the centre of his doctrine. We have 
already indicated our belief that this is overdrawn, 
that Jesus' idea of himself as the Messiah was 
thoroughly tributary to his conception of the kingdom, 
and that it only was the perception of the people's 
need, and of his own ability to satisfy this need, which 
clothed itself in the garb which it naturally would take 
on in a Jewish mind, the belief that he was the 
bringer of the only true salvation to his people, and 
therefore the Messiah. Now the very fact that the 
kingdom of heaven had such a supreme value in Jesus' 
mind, and the way in which it is the kingdom and the 
kingdom alone which is insisted on in the greater 
number of his sayings, makes it unlikely that he di- 



236 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

vided his allegiance between two not very closely con- 
nected doctrines. And again the narrative of the day 
at Csesarea Philippi bears this out. Doubts have been 
raised as to the genuineness of this account, but 
they do not seem to us to be well founded. It 
seems certainly to have been present in the earliest 
source. Mark, it is true, and following him I^uke, 
omit Jesus' words, but the narrative which they do 
have has all the marks of an abridgment. Apart 
from Jesus' words Peter's statement ceases in large 
measure to be intelligible, and in its brevity and 
terseness gives no hint that the event was one of cap- 
ital importance in Jesus' life. Since therefore Mark 
makes of it the crisis in the development of his plot, 
and since Mark, even when he is the freest, seldom 
is without some basis in his source for his more im- 
portant conceptions, it is probable that he had the 
longer and more intelligible form before him. And 
in this way it is easily explained how, with no sound 
tradition to back him, he comes so near to being right 
in his general conception of Jesus' Messianic relations 
with the people. Moreover, he uses the opening sen- 
tences of the narrative in another story of his own, 1 
and when he does this it usually is with material which 
he gets out of his source. But this would make the 
origin of the passage much too early to let it be ex- 
plained as due to Roman influence, and this is the only 
natural explanation of it if it is not genuine. But 
there really is no need to suspect the story, for it fits 
in unobtrusively with what we have shown was the 
general position which Jesus took. Iyooked at as in fact 
the words of Jesus, the passage makes it plain that not 
even to the disciples had Jesus spoken of himself as 
»Mk.6: 14-16. 



The Messiahship of Jesus. 237 

the Messiah, but that he had been waiting till it should 
be no external information to them, but they should 
be ready to see it with their own eyes, and to under- 
stand it something as he did himself. It is only as 
a first confession that the solemn joy of Jesus can be 
understood. No flesh and blood could reveal it 
to them, but only the Father in heaven. Up to this 
time therefore Jesus had been to them only the Son of 
man ; he had not been willing to force by any artificial 
process a higher faith in him, although he had been 
working and hoping that this might come about. 
And now in fear and trembling he puts the question 
which shall show whether or no he has succeeded, and 
he finds that Peter at least has learned the lesson. 
But with all this it is the kingdom, and not his own 
position which is the great thing to him. The joy 
that Jesus showed at Peter's confession was due, not 
to the recognition of his own dignity, but to the fact 
that this recognition revealed a dawning sense of what 
the kingdom really was. Peter had been able to see 
the head of that kingdom, not in a prince of the house 
of David, but in a simple teacher of righteousness. 
And the way in which Jesus goes on to speak is the 
proof of this. For the reason that he gives for the joy 
he has just expressed is that now at last the success of 
the kingdom is assured. Jesus already saw that to him 
the full assurance of victory was not to be given, 
he was to set in motion the conflict, and that was all ; 
and if he were to die with his message still not under- 
stood, everything would have been thrown away. 
But now that Peter once had taken the decisive step 
and had gotten a glimpse, though ever so slight a one, 
of Jesus' meaning, the truth would care for its own, 
and the kingdom must conquer in the end, though the 



238 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

very gates of Hades should oppose it. Peter was the 
first, but he was the promise of all the great assembly 
of the future. Just what form the new movement 
was to take, what its outward organization was to be, 
or whether it was to be organized at all, Jesus could 
leave for the disciples themselves to work out as their 
own needs and circumstances should prompt them ; 
he was satisfied if he could get firmly settled in them 
the living principle of truth. 

The conception of Jesus' Messiahship was therefore 
in his own mind distinctly subordinate to the concep- 
tion of the kingdom of heaven. Nevertheless it would 
be a mistake to minimize this element of his doctrine, 
and there seems to be evidence to show that Jesus 
really did claim for himself a position which at the 
least was unique. A distinction must be made how- 
ever between the claims which Jesus makes to the 
people and those which he makes to the inner and 
more intimate circle of his disciples. It does not 
appear that in speaking to the people Jesus assumed 
a much greater authority than any bold and earnest 
prophet might have done, and the passages which 
seems to go against this will not stand a critical scru- 
tiny. The claim to forgive sins already drops away 
with the miracle to which it is attached. The similar 
claim to be Lord of the Sabbath is less suspicious, and 
might without very great difficulty be made out to be 
in harmony with Jesus' attitude ; but the ease with 
which an Evangelist in telling of the incident might 
draw the conclusion ' ' The Son of man is I^ord even 
of the Sabbath," and the unlikelihood that Jesus, in 
arguing with enemies, should have irritated them by a 
useless and quite anomalous appeal to his own personal 
authority, which was precisely what they did not 



The Messiahship of Jesus. 239 

recognize, debars us from allowing any value to the 
saying. Connected with this there is the somewhat 
similar saying found only in Matthew, in which Jesus 
speaks of himself as greater than the Temple, and 
which probably is one of Matthew's own additions. 
This has the same objection to it as the last, and both 
moreover are precluded by the fact that they bring 
confusion into Jesus' argument. Jesus wishes to show 
that the accusation which the Pharisees bring against 
his disciples is based upon no essential principle of 
right and wrong, and he does this, as his custom is, 
by appealing to the I^aw which the} 7 all recognize. He 
only w T eakens and obscures this if he goes on to say, 
At any rate I claim the authority to make what rules 
I please about the Sabbath, or, Since the priests have 
the right to perform their sacred duties in the Temple 
on the Sabbath, and I am greater than the Temple, 
those who are connected with my person have also 
special privileges. Neither of these are arguments, 
for they go on premises which are not admitted ; and 
in the last one there is really no analogy between satis- 
fying one's own needs and carrying on the ritual of wor- 
ship. The most striking saying which we have left is 
that in which Jesus compares himself to Solomon and 
Jonah, and asserts his superiority to both. But while 
he always speaks with authority it is seldom that he 
puts his authority forward so prominently as he does 
here. When he is talking with his disciples, however, 
the case is somewhat different, and there can be little 
doubt that he speaks with a self-confidence which at 
times is almost startling ; though of course not all that 
is attributed to him can be relied on. The baptismal 
formula which is put in his mouth would have to be 
rejected even if it were not represented as being spoken 



240 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

after his resurrection, for it clearly shows the influence 
of dogma ; and the promise to be continually in the 
midst of his disciples to answer prayer is an amplifica- 
tion of a saying which we still have nearer in its 
original form in Mark. ' Moreover, the saying which 
Matthew records, " He that loveth father or mother 
more than me is not worthy of me, ' ' probably must give 
place to the form as it appears in Luke, ' ' If any man 
cometh to me, and hateth not his father and mother, 
he cannot be my disciple " ; for the saying stands at 
the head of a discourse, where the latter form is less 
abrupt. And between the phrases ' ' for my sake ' ' and 
<J for the kingdom of heaven's sake," both of which 
are found, the choice is doubtful, with perhaps an 
advantage in favor of the latter. Nevertheless with 
no uncertain voice Jesus proclaims himself their I^ord 
and Master, above whom the disciple cannot rise, he 
commands with all the authority of an " I say unto 
you, ' ' prophets and kings have looked forward to his 
day, to confess him is to be confessed before the Father. 
Doubtless this was due in part to a perception of how 
vast an incentive personal love and devotion must 
prove in the disciples' lives, but it was also more than 
this. The very fact that with such confidence Jesus 
could have felt himself the Messiah of an ideal so 
lofty and deep-reaching as his own, which made the 
little ones of the new kingdom greater than the 
greatest who had gone before, is proof positive of a 
conviction that his was a relationship to God and men 
above that which other men had found it possible to 
attain. But this greatness is no external one, it is a 
greatness which belongs to service, and which gives 
him no privileges above his fellows ; in particular it is 
1 Matt. 18 : 19-20; cf. Mk. 11 : 24. 



The Messiahship of Jesus. 241 

a greatness which rests upon the greatness of the truth 
which has been revealed to him. It is to this that Jesus 
points in the passage which marks his Messianic con- 
sciousness at its highest. " I thank thee, O Father, 
L,ord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these 
things from the wise and understanding, and didst 
reveal them unto babes : yea, Father ; for so it was 
well pleasing in thy sight. All things have been 
delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth 
the Son save the Father ; neither doth any know the 
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
light. ' ' The passage is unique among Jesus' sayings, 
and yet we do not think that there is any sufficient 
reasons to doubt that Jesus really spoke it. The 
knowledge that in the midst of loneliness and mis- 
understanding and the heartsickness of failure, God 
knew the truth of him and had marked him for his 
own, the consciousness that he was permitted to stand 
in a special relation to the Father, and that to him 
God had been revealed as he had not revealed himself 
to any other man, that this revelation was a message of 
infinite love and compassion to weary and burdened 
men, which he alone was able to make real to them, 
this is what gave Jesus his divine confidence. From 
another man words like these would sound strange 
and boastful ; from the lips of Jesus they come to us 

naturally, because of Jesus they are true. 
16 




CHAPTER IV. 

JESUS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE UW. 

OF the general attitude which Jesus held towards 
the Mosaic law and the religion of the Old Tes- 
tament there can be no reasonable doubt. Jesus 
certainly believed that the Old Testament furnished a 
revelation of God's will, and upon it his own spiritual 
life had been nourished. There is no evidence that 
upon critical questions which concern the Old Testa- 
ment he held views which differed from those views 
which his contemporaries held ; critical questions one 
might say indeed would have had very little attraction 
to him. He reveres the Temple with all its associa- 
tions ; he recognizes sacrifice as one way of paying 
worship to God ; he does not blame the Pharisees be- 
cause of the attention which they paid to the lesser 
matters of the L,aw, but because they neglected what 
was weightier ; there is one who is good, he says, and 
therefore, in having his law the way to eternal life is 
already given : so much we may agree to without hesi- 
tation. 

But this, after all has been said, really tells very 
little indeed, for whatever at bottom Jesus' attitude 
had been, this in any case would have been true. If 
Jesus had possessed the reforming spirit, if he had 

242 



Jesus Attitude towards the Law. 243 

been fond of attacking errors and correcting misap- 
prehensions, the case would have been different ; but 
the spirit of iconoclasm was least of all congenial to 
Jesus, who cared most to insist upon positive truth. 
Instead of overthrowing old institutions, and thus run- 
ning the risk that men would lose the elements of 
truth which these institutions contained, he set himself 
to introduce, wherever he was able, a higher view, 
which, as soon as it was mastered, should leave the old 
one to fall away of itself. If, therefore, Jesus had 
looked upon the Mosaic law as something temporary 
and unessential, we should not have expected him to 
state this plainly ; the age was not ready for such a 
statement, and his disciples were not ready for it, and 
he only could give to them principles which afterwards 
they might carry out for themselves. Nor is it quite 
right to speak of this as an accommodation to the dis- 
ciples' views. Jesus' reverence for the old religion and 
his recognition of its divine character would be per- 
fectly sincere, and he only would not insist upon what 
he thought would for the present do more harm than 
good. And this, if it had been Jesus' attitude, we now 
are in a position to see would have been the only thing 
for him to do. One cannot teach truth by stating it in so 
many words ; such a statement is worse than useless un- 
less the hearer can be made to see the basis upon which 
the truth rests, the reason for it. And how impossible it 
would have been to make the disciples understand this, 
we can guess from the fact that even that which formed 
the centre of Jesus' teaching and which continually he 
was insisting on, the kingdom of heaven as a kingdom 
of righteousness, the disciples never more than half 
understood. 
The great mistake of later Judaism lay in the fact 



244 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

that it was a religion based almost wholly upon an out- 
ward revelation in the past, the religion of a book. 
God, it was thought, had given a certain number of 
rules which men were to observe, not because there 
was anything in the rules themselves which claimed 
their obedience, but because God had commanded 
them ; and in this L,aw religion was contained. It was 
not until comparatively late times that the elaboration 
of these rules reached such a height that they became 
an intolerable burden ; then the scribes, by an endless 
hair-splitting, had drawn from the more general com- 
mands in the Old Testament applications to almost 
every conceivable case, and each of these was just as 
binding as if it had been expressly stated in the Law. 
But we must not overlook the fact that the same thing 
was to be found in the Old Testament itself, although 
there it was not yet carried to such absurd lengths. 
The ritual legislation, the distinction between what 
was clean and what was not clean, were already laid 
down in the L,aw with wearisome detail, and were rec- 
ognized as binding in just the same degree as the moral 
requirements. And the casuistry of later times was a 
necessary result of this, for puzzling cases must con- 
stantly be arising, and then men had to have some rule 
to follow. Doubtless this strictness in guarding the 
I,aw was not without its advantages, but the essential 
defect of it all, as we have said, was the attempt to 
make religion depend upon external authority. God, 
it was thought, might command what he pleased, and 
that the rules were quite arbitrary, that they had no 
moral quality in the least, counted for nothing against 
the fact that God had commanded them. To abstain 
from pork was just as much a command of God as to 
abstain from murder, and from this the step was not a 



Jesus Attitude towards the Law. 245 

very long one that the one was as important as the 
other ; it was a mistake which the prophets had fore- 
seen, and into which the nation as a whole gradually 
but surely fell. What right had men to make any dis- 
tinction between God's commands? Were they not 
all equally important ? And so the distinction between 
moral duties and ritual duties grew weaker and 
weaker. Injustice would tend to become a crime, not 
because it was unjust, but because it was forbidden ; 
and consequently, if one could be unjust, and still 
could keep within the letter of the law, he had nothing 
to fear. And it was just to this that Judaism came. 
The letter of the I^aw was everything, the spirit very 
little ; men might seize upon the pretext of a religious 
duty to neglect the duty which they owed their par- 
ents. And quite as naturally was the Pharisaic self- 
sufficiency, his utter lack of humility and of sympathy 
with his fellows, the result of this tendency. When 
duty is made a matter of the heart no man is likely to 
come so close to his ideal that he is greatly inclined to 
pride himself upon his attainments. But with the 
Pharisees religious duty was a perfectly definite thing, 
not too far out of the reach of a careful man. He was 
not to commit murder — well, that was not a very hard 
task : angry thoughts he did not concern himself much 
about. He had certain definite things to avoid, cer- 
tain definite washings and sacrifices to go through, and 
every now and then he might well look back upon a 
day in which he had walked with well-nigh perfect 
uprightness. 

Now was this in any way Jesus' attitude towards 
the Iyaw ? did he think of the L,aw as something which 
in its smallest prescriptions was of divine authority, 
which in its ritual was always to be binding upon the 



246 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

citizens of the new kingdom ? As has been said al- 
ready, we cannot expect that Jesus will answer this 
question directly, and we only can judge of what his 
answer would be by the indications which he lets fall. 
And to begin with, Jesus does not speak of his teach- 
ing as the revival of old truth which had become 
neglected, he speaks of it as something new. It is 
new wine that cannot be contained in old bottles ; the 
personal element in his teaching — I say unto you — he 
constantly is making prominent ; the scribe who is in- 
structed into the kingdom is neither to neglect the 
former things nor to make them all-important, he is 
to bring forth from his store-house things new and old. 
Now this, by itself, if we consider it, is really a setting 
aside of the old point of view ; the Law no longer is 
the perfect standard, and instead of being judged by 
it, Jesus judges the Law. The one who is but little in 
the kingdom which Jesus announces is greater than 
the greatest who came before him, greater, therefore, 
than Moses himself, who gave the Law. And this 
principle Jesus does not hesitate to put in practice. 
The Law grants divorce, Jesus says that divorce is 
not to be granted ; the Law permits retaliation, and 
Jesus forbids it : the authority, the perfect straight- 
forwardness with which Jesus does this, shows that 
however sacred the Law was to him, it was not the 
simple fact that a command was in the Law which 
made it sacred, but that he had a standard by which 
even the Law was to be measured. And still more sig- 
nificant is the silence of Jesus. In Jesus' controversies 
with the Pharisees he once or twice directly opposes a 
precept of the Law, but ordinarily he does not do this. 
On the contrary, he opposes the law to the later tra- 
dition, which the Pharisees observed, and even when 



Jesus Attitude towards the Law, 247 

he is arguing against divorce, he does this by an ap- 
peal to another passage in the Law. But while in this 
Jesus seems to argue as the scribes might have argued, 
it is remarkable that he never appeals to anything 
which does not have a direct moral significance, and 
which does not carry its own authority with it. This 
is indeed the value which expressly he sets upon the 
Old Testament, its power for righteousness. Whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even 
so to them, — this is to him the I^aw and the prophets. 
That which sums up everything is love to God and 
love to one's neighbor ; judgment, mercy, truth, these 
are the weightier matters of the I^aw. And the utter 
absence of any reference to circumcision, to the per- 
formance of ritual duties, is really decisive against 
them. If, when other men were insisting upon these, 
Jesus planted himself squarely upon righteousness, 
and made righteousness the sole condition, we hardly 
can think that it was an oversight on Jesus' part, or 
that he did not see the bearing of his own teachings. 
And fortunately we have several instances where, in 
a less general way, Jesus shows what his real attitude 
was, and first is his teaching in reference to the Sab- 
bath. Jesus' argument was directed against Rabbinical 
subtilties, and it had no direct reference to the Old 
Testament at all ; but really it tells nearly as strongly 
against the priestly views of the Sabbath which we 
find in the Old Testament, as it does against the 
Rabbis. And that Jesus was not unaware of this, we 
might gather from the illustration which he gives 
about the shew -bread. ' ' Have ye not read what David 
did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with 
him ; how he entered into the house of God, and did 
eat the shew-bread, which it was not lawful for him to 



248 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for 
the priests ? ' ' Here certainly it is a violation of the 
I^aw which Jesus justifies, and if this illustration 
proves that the Rabbinical rule may be broken, it 
proves just as clearly that the rule about shew-bread 
may be broken also without offence to God. The argu- 
ment can scarcely be simply that in a case of great 
necessity God's commandment may be overborne. 
This of itself would compel one to go further and to 
make distinctions, for surely Jesus never would have 
justified this in the case of the " weightier matters ' ' of 
the Law ; and besides, in this case, the need of the 
disciples seems by no means to have been great, and so 
such a consideration would not be suggested by the 
incident. Really it seems to lead to this, that require- 
ments of this sort which have no moral significance, 
cannot be the immutable, the eternal will of God, and 
so cannot have that sanction which the Pharisees as- 
serted. We might appeal also to the way in which 
Jesus bases forgiveness of sins altogether upon moral 
grounds, without any reference to offerings or sacri- 
fices. But what is most decisive is the attitude which 
he shows towards ceremonial cleanness. ''There is 
nothing, ' ' he says, ' ' from without that entering into a 
man can defile him, but the things which come out 
from a man, these defile the man." Here, too, the 
argument is directed in the first place against the tra- 
ditional additions to the I,aw, and we may doubt 
whether the explanation of the saying which the Gos- 
pels give really came from Jesus. But there can be no 
doubt that the explanation is the true one, and what- 
ever Jesus' reference may have been, the argument 
applies just as decisively to the Old Testament regula- 
tions with regard to clean and unclean food. Did 



Jesus Attitude towards the Law. 249 

Jesus, with all his clear-sightedness, fail to see this ? 
did he think that the principle which he sets down 
clearly and without limitation applies to the traditions 
of the Rabbis, and ceases to apply when it come in 
contact with the Law ? if Jesus fails to make this dis- 
tinction for himself, we do not feel justified in making 
it for him. 

Taken altogether, these indications give a pretty 
clear account of what Jesus' position was. There are 
three attitudes, any one of which it is conceivable he 
might have taken. He might have set everything in 
the Law squarely on the same basis, so far as its obli- 
gatoriness went, or he might have put the supreme value 
of the Law on its power for righteousness. And in 
this latter case again, he might or he might not have 
recognized all that his position implied. For since the 
Law does actually consist of a mixture of absolute 
principles with much that is arbitrary and that has 
very little to do with righteousness, it would be quite 
possible for one, taking only the grand sweep of the 
book into his account, to lay the great emphasis upon 
the principles which do indeed run through it, and 
still not go the length of rejecting out and out the 
other elements which it contains, but, without scru- 
tinizing carefully the basis of their authority, accept 
them as a matter of fact, and then simply suffer them 
to drop into the background. This is the attitude 
which to-day is adopted widely with reference to the 
Bible ; everything that is in the Bible is claimed to be 
divine, but the stress is laid upon the general trend of 
the Book, and what is inconsistent with this general 
trend is practically ignored. We have tried to show 
that not only did Jesus not take the first position, but 
that in looking at the Law as a power for righteousness 



250 The Life and Teachings of jfesus. 

and not as a legal code, he recognized that this meant 
in time the falling away of much that was in the Law 
itself, the rooting up of everything the heavenly Father 
had not planted. There are, however, in our Gospels, 
several sayings which tend to disprove this position 
though some of these are found in passages which for 
other reasons have already been rejected. And of the 
two which remain one must be given up without hesi- 
tation, the passage in which Jesus exhorts the people 
to observe the tradition of the elders. Not only is this 
utterly opposed to the rest of Jesus' teaching, but the 
critical reasons against it are unusually strong. The 
whole passage by which Matthew introduces the woes 
against the Pharisees seems to be a literary combina- 
tion. The address changes in an impossible way from 
the people to the disciples, and then to the Pharisees. 
The accusation against the scribes, that they give no 
help to those whom they load with burdens, as it seems 
originally to have been, becomes an accusation that 
they do not bear these burdens themselves, and this 
historically seems not to have been true. Then Mark's 
parallel account is inserted, and five verses follow, two 
of which we still have in their original connection in 
the source from which both Luke and Matthew drew, 
while the other three, the prohibition of titles, appar- 
ently are of a later origin. It hardly was necessary to 
warn Galilean fishermen against accepting the title of 
Rabbi ; the Christ is spoken of in a very objective way, 
and the position which he is given is the later theo- 
logical one ; and the whole spirit of the prohibition 
does not suggest Jesus, who himself accepted the title 
of Rabbi and teacher without demur. The discourse 
may originally have opened with the verse which gives 
its motive, " Ye shut the kingdom of heaven against 



Jesus Attitude towards the Law, 251 

men." The other passage, however, of which we 
spoke, and which is found at the beginning of the 
Sermon on the Mount, deserves a more elaborate 
treatment. 

1 ' Think not, ' ' says Jesus, ' ' that I came to destroy 
the Law or the prophets : I came not to destroy, but 
to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and 
earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
pass away from the Law, till all things be accomplished. 
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least com- 
mandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least 
in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and 
teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of 
heaven." If Jesus really spoke these words, they settle 
at once his position in regard to the Law, for it does 
not seem possible legitimately to get any other meaning 
out of them than what appears on the surface. Critics 
who have not wished to admit this, have tried to give a 
different turn to them : Professor Bruce, for example, has 
explained them merely as a protest against a hasty and 
irreverent setting aside of these time-honored require- 
ments, against the negative spirit, the spirit of icono- 
clasm ; and others see in them only a highly figurative 
assertion of the perpetuity of the Law in its grand and 
essential features. But, however one may try to per- 
suade himself of this, as soon as he comes back to the 
words themselves he must feel that his explanations 
are not perfectly natural ones. If Jesus had wished to 
say that the Law, in its entirety, was to be perpetually 
valid, could he have used any stronger words than 
these, or indeed any very different words ? Till heaven 
and earth pass, not the smallest letter shall pass from 
the Law ; the very least commandment it is forbidden 
to set aside. It seems to us that these words are to be 



252 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 

taken naturally, upon the face of them, in their literal 
sense. If an American orator, in talking of the Con- 
stitution, were to say, Not a letter shall be altered while 
the country stands, and he who disputes the smallest 
provision that it contains is a traitor, we should not 
naturally suppose him to mean only that the Consti- 
tution was a work of broad-minded statesmanship, 
embodying excellent political principles, but not nec- 
essarily adapted in its details to the future, because the 
Constitution carries to us, just as the Law carried to 
the Jew, the idea of a definite document. Now sup- 
pose that when Jesus says neither jot nor tittle is to 
pass away, he can mean simply that the ethical stand- 
ard of the Law shall not be lowered a particle, can he 
mean this when he speaks of the least commandment ? 
Commandments are commandments, not principles ; 
instead of looking at the Law as an ethical standard 
and so ignoring its legal side, he here uses the very 
expression which points to definite prescriptions. The 
word ' ' least ' ' emphasizes this reference. We know 
what Jesus meant by the lesser matters of the Law ; 
what can this least commandment mean but the ceremo- 
nial precepts as well ? And another reason against this 
interpretation lies in the fact that Jesus' hearers could 
not have understood him to have this meaning, and 
must even have understood him very differently. The 
Pharisees were accusing Jesus, not in the least of low- 
ering the ethical standard of the Law, but of breaking 
its ceremonial requirements. It is true that in their 
minds the accent was not upon the " ceremonial," but 
upon the " Law," for to them the Law was a whole ; 
nevertheless, it was really to the Law as ceremonial 
that their complaint had reference. If now to this 
state of mind Jesus had addressed such words as these, 



Jesus Attitude towards the Law. 253 

they only could have been understood in one sense, 
that the L,aw, as the Jews understood it, was to be per- 
petually valid. So that Jesus lays himself open to the 
charge intentionally of using words liable to be mis- 
understood, in order to defend himself against the 
charge of his enemies. And even granting he meant 
to be understood in the less obvious way, and that his 
hearers so understood him, there is the further diffi- 
culty that he is begging the whole question, for in 
ignoring the I^aw as a legal code, he is ignoring the 
very point which the Pharisees made against him. 

For these reasons we cannot convince ourselves that 
the words are meant to be understood other than in 
their literal sense,, so that if Jesus really spoke them, 
he is here expressly denying the position which we 
have attributed to him. But did Jesus really speak 
these words ? if he did speak them, then they stand 
alone among his sayings, they are contrary to what 
there are strong reasons for thinking was Jesus' real 
belief; and this is enough to make them very doubtful. 
And the passage as an interpolation is easily explained. 
The question of the L,aw was a most important one in 
the early Church, and some Jewish copyist, meeting 
with the words of Jesus, " I came not to destroy, but to 
fulfil," may well have thought he was only carrying 
out and expounding Jesus' meaning, in opposition to 
the Paulinists, by this note which he added. This 
moreover explains the emphasis which is laid upon 
teaching that the I*aw is abrogated, a thing which 
seems to imply the actual controversy in the Church ; 
whereas Jesus, in a discourse relating wholly to per- 
sonal conduct, would not have been likely to bring in 
this allusion to a future error of doctrine. What, how- 
ever, is most decisive is the fact that we can still detect 



254 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

in our passage a mixture of two entirely distinct points 
of view. ' ' Think not, ' ' says Jesus, ' ' that I came 
to destroy the Law or the prophets : I came not to 
destroy, but to fulfil. ' ' Now what does this sentence 
fairly imply ? Does it not imply that there was some- 
thing in Jesus' teaching which seemed to a superficial 
view an abrogation of the Law ? Why otherwise 
should it occur to them to think that he had come to 
destroy ? But, says Jesus, this is not so : even when 
I seem to destroy I am really bringing out the true, 
the hidden principle which the Law strove to express 
in a partial, a tentative way. But in the verses 
which follow, the verses let us notice where all the 
critical difficulty occurs, the point of view suddenly 
changes, and we have a man to whom the Law is 
everything, who clings passionately to the smallest 
letter as well, and will not endure the least change in 
it. And with this first point of view, not with the 
second, the sayings which follow agree. "I came 
not," says Jesus, "to destroy, but to fulfil"; and 
then he goes on to show how this fulfilment is to be 
brought about ; instead of a command against mur- 
der, no angry feelings, instead of a command against 
adultery, no lustful desires, instead of strict justice, 
mercy, instead of partial love, love which is complete. 
If this interpretation is correct then, it is a clear 
statement of the attitude which we have attributed to 
Jesus. The idea had already got afloat that Jesus was 
for breaking down the Law, and in answer to this he 
declares that he has no mind to destroy but to com- 
plete. But this very statement implies that Jesus 
recognized the incompleteness of the Law, and in 
showing how this incompleteness is to be remedied he 
points out in detail some of the defects he has in his 



jfesus Attitude towards the Law, 255 

thought. It would not touch the general position of 
Jesus, although that position would not be so dis- 
tinctly stated in the present passage, if these words 
actually were spoken, as some have thought, with the 
practice of the Pharisees particularly in view, and not 
the teaching of the Law. The evidence, however, 
seems to us to go against this theory. The word 
7r\rjpGbGai might in the connection have any one of 
three meanings. It might mean that Jesus had come 
to fulfil the Law in the sense that a prophecy might 
be fulfilled, by doing what had been looked forward 
to and in a sense foretold when the Law was given ; 
or it might mean that Jesus was to exhibit in his own 
life a perfect realization of the Law ; or that, as we 
have held, he came to complete it, to fill it with a 
fuller meaning. As for the first theory, which is a 
popular one, that Jesus by his death was to fulfil the 
Old Testament ritual and so do away with it, it only 
need be mentioned in passing. Whoever holds this 
theory will probably not be willing to reject the follow- 
ing verses, and so it may be pointed out that one does 
not talk about heaven and earth passing if he only 
means a year or so ; and besides it was only after Jesus' 
death that what he forbids could occur, the teaching 
that some of the Law was no longer binding. Between 
the other two meanings there are several considera- 
tions which decide in favor of the last one. In the 
first place "complete" is a better contrast to "de- 
stroy ' ' than ' ' perform completely " is : to " destroy 
the Law ' ' and to ' ' complete the Law, ' ' that is, are 
both to produce certain modifying and external effects 
upon the Law itself. Moreover, it is something quite 
anomalous in Jesus' teaching, if he lays the stress 
upon his own perfect life, and not upon the perfection 



256 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

of the truth which he brings ; Jesus elsewhere never 
transgresses the virtue of humility when his own per- 
sonal character is concerned. And it also stands alone 
in the discourse in which it is found, for through- 
out the Sermon Jesus does not again call attention to 
himself ; whereas if the word means ' ' to complete, ' ' it 
stands in an intimate connection with the sayings 
which follow. Jesus says that he has come to complete 
the Law, and then he goes on immediately to show 
how this completion is to be brought about. The 
obvious connection between these two sections, when 
they are interpreted in such a way, goes far to show 
that the interpretation is a true one. 

If therefore nXrfpoDOai is to be translated " to com- 
plete " the law, it is almost certain that in the succeed- 
ing verses Jesus has the Law direct in mind, and not 
simply Pharisaic perversions of the Law. There are 
arguments indeed for this last alternative. The phra- 
seology which Jesus uses, it is argued, ' ' ye have heard 
that it hath been said, ' ' instead of "ye have read, ' ' 
points to the teaching prevalent in the synagogue ; and 
the illustrations which follow are thought to show the 
Pharisaic temper in a slavish clinging to the letter, and 
a refusal to enter into the spirit of the old command. 
And particularly this would be the case with the in- 
junction, not simply to love one's neighbor, but to hate 
one's enemy as well. But the first argument is weak- 
ened by the fact that while Jesus naturally would say 
' ' ye have read, \ ' in addressing Pharisees and Rabbis, he 
just as naturally would say, ' ' ye have heard, ' ' when he 
had to do with uneducated listeners, who had got the 
most of their knowledge by word of mouth. Moreover, 
i l I say unto you ' ' is better contrasted with ' ' it hath been 
said ' ' than with ' ' ye have heard ' ' ; and the very fact 



yesus Attitude towards the Law. 257 

that the Old Testament is mentioned at all is enough 
to show that Jesus had it in his mind. If Jesus had 
been thinking of the Pharisees' teaching he would 
probably have put it, " ye have heard it said," and not 
1 ' ye have heard that Moses said. ' ' And as for the other 
objection, we have already indicated that we think the 
last clause is to be thrown out ; and besides it is in no 
wise probable that the Pharisees, any more than the 
Law itself, made hatred of enemies an express theolog- 
ical tenet in their synagogue teaching. And if this 
clause is dropped all the illustrations are then based 
directly upon the Old Testament, and Jesus' teaching 
is just as truly an advance upon the Law as it is upon 
the Pharisees' interpretation. To be sure Jesus con- 
siders that he is only carrying out principles which really 
lie at the basis of the Old Testament regulations, and 
which any one, if he had insight enough, might extract 
from them, but this does not alter the fact that in 
reality the Law had stopped half-way, and failed to 
carry out the principles to their true conclusion. 

To sum up, therefore, once again, Jesus occupies 
himself first and foremost with the positive value of 
the Law for righteousness. He says nothing against 
ritual, because in itself ritual may be a good thing ; 
he simply ignores it, and by ignoring it he denies its 
authority. A perfect illustration of what Jesus' method 
was we find in a lesser question, the matter of fasting. 
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus recognizes fasting 
as a legitimate form of religious exercise, and he as- 
sumes that his disciples will practise it. But when 
the Pharisees are for making it a religious rule, a thing 
of divine appointment, Jesus refuses to submit to this. 
" Can ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast so 

long as the bridegroom is with them ? But the days will 
17 



258 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

come in which the bridegroom shall be taken from them, 
and then shall they fast. ' ' Fasting may be a good 
thing, he has nothing to say against it ; but it only is 
good when it is a perfectly natural expression of reli- 
gious feeling, and any attempt to make it more than 
this, to make it an obligation, Jesus steadily resists. 




CHAPTER V. 

JKSUS' DOCTRINE OF GOD AND MAN. 

THE religious conception of Jesus, which he em- 
bodied in his one comprehensive doctrine of the 
kingdom of heaven, gathers itself about two main 
centres, which modern thought indeed has often tried 
to show have no essential connection with one another, 
but which in Jesus' mind were closely bound together, 
and each of which played a necessary part in making 
up the final harmony of his view of the world. These 
two central conceptions were, on the one side his doc- 
trine of God, and on the other side his strong realiza- 
tion of the obligation and the beauty of righteous 
character, and his sense of the pre-eminent dignity and 
value which it lent to every being who was capable 
of attaining to it. Indeed it was the very intensity 
of these two beliefs which brought it about that there 
were no more, which kept Jesus' doctrine so admirably 
simple, and enabled him to let go of the swarm of half- 
religious conceptions which filled the creeds of his 
time. For the most part it is not men of deep religious 
feeling whom we expect will be the first to see the 
insufficiency of the prevalent forms into which religious 
truth has become cast. The very vividness of their 
religious insight invests the forms as well as the inner 

259 



260 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

reality, unless these forms are morally unworthy as 
well, with a sacredness which keeps them from seeing 
the deficiencies. It often happens that the very defects 
of a man's mind are of use to him in discovering the 
negative aspects of truth. It is his insensibility to 
what is really of value in an inadequate conception 
which enables him to disentangle the knot which 
holds the true and the false elements together, and to 
see wherein the inadequacy consists. It only is in 
supreme minds that the intensity and white heat of 
real and positive truth serves this same purpose, and 
crumbles away everything that has the least element 
of weakness in it. And it was in this, rather than in 
the critical way, that Jesus' mind acted. 

Jesus' doctrine of God is not a product of philoso- 
phizing, but the outcome of a real personal need and of 
a direct insight. Jesus never reasons about the exist- 
ence of God, but he simply assumes it. It was in an 
atmosphere of belief in God that he grew up, and there 
was but little in the influences which were brought to 
bear upon him which could tend to call up the philo- 
sophic doubts of modern times. Atheism, if real 
atheism there was at all, in the circle in which Jesus 
moved, was only the wilful disbelief of the wicked 
man to whom the thought of God was distasteful. 
But the influence which this belief has over Jesus 
is not due to the fact that he had been taught to 
believe it, for he had been taught to believe other 
things which he afterwards came to set aside ; it is due 
to its meeting and satisfying the deepest needs in 
Jesus' own nature. Accordingly he has not simply 
taken up the conception as it came to him, but he has 
modified it very essentially in accordance with his own 
personal genius. The God of Jesus is both more com- 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 261 

prehensive and more human than the God of Judaism. 
The latter was essentially a being throned outside the 
world, whose direct relationship to men was spasmodic 
and supernatural. But to Jesus this was too cold a 
conception. He bad too keen a sense for the color and 
life of external nature, to be willing that this should 
be shut off from the all-pervading influence of the 
divine working. Accordingly to him the universe is 
filled with God ; God is immanent in nature, if we may 
give a somewhat modern tinge to the statement. He 
clothes the lily and directs the sparrow's fall, with 
impartial beneficence he sends his rain on the evil and 
on the good. Whether Jesus was perfectly consistent 
in following this out it is very difficult to say. Strictly 
it would do away with the Jewish belief in Satan and 
a host of evil spirits who exert an influence on earthly 
matters ; but there is not enough evidence to show 
whether Jesus went so far as to reject this view alto- 
gether. It is true that the Gospels attribute to him 
clearly enough a belief in Satan and in demons, but 
the great bulk of these passages are dubious in the 
extreme. The passage in which he defends himself 
against the accusation of the Pharisees, and the parable 
of the demoniac, are the only clear pieces of evidence, 
and these do not settle the question the one way or the 
other. In the first instance he confessedly is adopting 
the standpoint of his opponents, and in any case his 
habit of mind is so picturesque that he naturally 
would be led to make use of a popular belief which lent 
itself so readily to vivid description. And the parable 
of the demoniac in particular, with its demons roaming 
restlessly about in the dry places, and coming back to 
their home to find it empty, swept, and garnished, 
impresses us as decidedly not being a literal attempt 



262 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

to give Jesus' ideas about devils. And if the popu- 
lar views of the habits of evil spirits Jesus regarded 
merely as a bit of poetry with which to give color to a 
parable, the probability is that he did not stop here. 
Moreover, it may be noticed that Jesus ordinarily 
places the source of evil with the man himself, in the 
human heart. The good man out of the good treasure 
brings forth good things, and the evil man out of the 
evil treasure brings forth evil things. If in the Sermon 
on the Mount Jesus speaks of the evil one as a source 
of evil, this also may be only a natural use of an ordi- 
nary conception ; and the very fact that it is decidedly 
uncertain whether the word is a masculine or a neuter 
goes to show that he did not have the thought of an 
evil personality clearly fixed before his mind. 

A much more important modification, however, of 
the common doctrine of God was that which had to do 
with the personal relations between God and men. We 
are become so used to the phrase, the Fatherhood of 
God, that we fail sometimes to realize all the meaning 
that it carries with it. It is the final and definite re- 
jection of all that is barbarous and arbitrary in the idea 
of God. It means the coming over to religion of the 
mightily transforming power of love. God is no longer 
a being to propitiate, to serve with fear and trembling 
lest he be angry ; religion does not consist in the careful 
avoiding of a multitude of things which a stern law- 
giver has forbidden ; but God himself is the first to offer 
forgiveness to his erring children, and the knowledge 
that it is God's will that is being done gives a new joy 
and incentive to action. Worship accordingly ceases 
to be the perfunctory thing which Judaism had made 
of it. No longer something which God commands 
for his own glory, it is the unforced outpouring of the 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 263 

worshipper's heart to one whose goodness he adores 
and whose loving aid he is sure of before he asks for it. 
Since, therefore, God is not a God outside the world, 
but constantly is working in it, since all things depend 
upon the will of God and carry out his loving purposes, 
Jesus could teach his disciples perfect trust in God 
even in the material things of this life, and could warn 
them against the anxiety which could see no over- 
looking Providence caring for the affairs of men. It 
certainly would be a mistake to interpret this as if 
Jesus were an impractical idealist who would have his 
followers leave the solid ground of reality and live in 
the visionary realm where the question of bread and 
butter no longer called for any thought or interest. 
This would show an unwarrantable neglect to make 
allowance for the character of Jesus' style. In reality 
it is the same thought which Paul expresses in less 
picturesque language, that all things work together for 
good to them that love God. Doubtless even then the 
doctrine is difficult for us to hold with the absolute 
confidence with which Jesus gave expression to it. 
Nevertheless, if the world is not a bad world, if good- 
ness and joy do in the last analysis lie at the basis of 
it, such a belief is no fool's dream with which to cheat 
ourselves, but a faith which is well founded, even 
though there is much that seems to go against it ; and 
the fact that we often seem to ourselves to be losing 
this faith, is only because we do not see so clearly as 
Jesus did the divineness of the world. And when this 
unfaith takes the form of anxious worryings, of con- 
tinual absorption in the grosser things of life so that 
the higher powers of the soul have no opportunity left 
them for action, then it becomes an unmitigated evil, 
and deserves all the warning that Jesus directs against 



264 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

it. In connection with this also is to be considered 
Jesus' doctrine of prayer. Jesus encourages his follow- 
ers to bring their needs to God, and ask for his assist- 
ance, and the assurance that their prayers will be heard 
he bases upon the fact of God's love, which always is 
working for the best good of his children. It would 
seem from a few passages that Jesus meant by this 
what a later and somewhat mechanical interpretation 
has supposed him to mean, that prayer is an instru- 
ment for forcing from God directly a definite, and, if 
need be, miraculous answer, but this is opposed to the 
whole trend of Jesus' teaching, and to his constant 
exaltation of the will of God. And there is after all 
no good support for such a view, for the saying about 
a sycamore tree removed and planted in the sea, when 
it is taken out of its secondary connection in the story 
of the barren fig-tree, is clearly a highly figurative ex- 
pression ; and the saying about the efficiency of prayer 
which appears in the discourse about offences, has in all 
probability been treated very freely by Matthew and 
Mark alike, so that we cannot reckon on its original 
form. And Jesus' own prayer which has come down 
to us shows what form it was he meant that petitions 
for material blessings should take, and how it was 
based upon the deeper conviction of the beneficent 
working of God in the material world. 

The doctrine of God which Jesus held undoubtedly 
gave a deeper and more abiding sanction to his insist- 
ence on righteousness. It gives in the first place the 
assurance that efforts for righteousness will not prove 
impotent, and that goodness has enlisted on its side 
the power which is supreme, and so is sure to conquer 
in the end. Moreover it brings the motive of loving 
gratitude into play ; Jesus could say, as in effect he 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 265 

did say, The love of God which he has shown to you, 
and which you owe to him, makes it incumbent on you, 
if you are not to be self-convicted of ingratitude, to 
work all the harder to accomplish God's will for you. 
But it probably is neither on the authority of God, nor 
on the love of God, though both these motives go to 
swell the stream, that Jesus rests ultimately the obliga- 
tion of right-doing. Here again Jesus does not go 
upon philosophy, but on insight ; he does not reason 
that such and such a thing is right, but he assumes 
that when it is pointed out to them all men will recog- 
nize its obligation. He goes on authority, as the Jews 
did, but it is on the authority of the moral insight 
rather than on the authority of external commands. 
And the supreme value of his teaching about righteous- 
ness lies in the marvellous lucidity of his vision, and 
the unerring touch with which he settles upon just the 
principles which continued experience and modern 
scrutiny tend to establish most firmly and securely. 

One of the most noticeable features which this intro- 
duced into Jesus' teaching was the supreme importance 
and value which he attached to the individual. This 
w T as due, in part, to his keen sympathies with the sor- 
rows and misery of men, and to the clearing away of 
all artificial distinctions and harsh, unloving judg- 
ments which his perception of the love of God would 
necessarily bring about. When Jesus came with the 
announcement, Blessed are the poor, blessed are the 
sorrowful, when he turned to the publicans and harlots, 
he struck, in a very large measure, a new note in reli- 
gion. The old religion of Israel had been a religion for 
the nation ; Jesus' religion was a religion for the man, 
and not for the wise man alone, nor for the strong man. 
Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn ; not 



266 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

because they are poor, but because poverty is no longer 
to debar them from their manhood ; not because they 
mourn, but because comfort is within their reach. And 
his perception that righteousness is not something 
to be brought about in the lump, but that each man 
must win it for himself in his own character, went also 
to make him turn his efforts, first of all, to the indi- 
vidual. He made no attempt to found an organization 
in the strict sense of the word. It was in the disciples' 
hands that the keys of the kingdom were placed, to 
bind or loose, as the Spirit should direct them. Into 
questions of politics he declined to enter : ' ' Render 
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God 
the things that are God's," was his answer to the 
eternal problem of his contemporaries as to what rela- 
tion the people of God should bear towards the Roman 
power. And in this reserve of Jesus, in this devotion 
to a single end, there lay one great secret of his success. 
Jesus sometimes has been blamed because he did not 
throw himself more into the social and political ques- 
tions of the day, because he did not leave us his views 
upon philanthropy and government and the manifold 
questions, important no doubt, which call for a solution 
from society. But such a criticism is short-sighted. 
If Jesus had done this he might have been a great 
reformer, but he never could have been the teacher and 
the saviour of the world ; if he had worked directly for 
institutions and for social organizations, he must have 
accommodated himself to the conditions by which he 
was surrounded, and have given up all thought of 
universal truth. For institutions cannot well be estab- 
lished on such a basis, they must be content, not with 
the best, but with the best that can be had ; and most 
of all this would have been so in Jesus' day. So that, 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 267 

do the best lie could, he must still have left the future 
to solve its own problems. But while social questions 
are relative, the principles which are to control the 
individual in all relations, the motives which are to 
govern his conduct, are, in large measure, absolute and 
universal ; and it is upon these, after all, that social 
questions rest. It is only when the man is transformed, 
as Jesus tried to transform him, that the solution of 
social questions first becomes possible. 

What the ideal was which Jesus set as the goal of 
human attainment, one cannot get more clearly before 
him than by reading the words of Jesus himself as they 
are recorded in the Gospels. No paraphrase of them 
can convey half so vivid an impression. Nevertheless, 
without trying to make a complete statement of it, a 
few of the more prominent points may here be noticed. 
In the first place, as has been mentioned already, Jesus 
places the sphere of a man's religious activity first and 
foremost in the ordinary and every-day relations of the 
present life. It is true that he puts love to God before 
love to man, because, in his view of it, love to God is 
the more comprehensive of the two and implies the 
other at the same time that it insures its completeness 
and permanence. But religion ordinarily goes beyond 
this, and puts an equally high value upon the more 
purely formal phases of the relationship between God 
and man. The forms of worship accordingly, the 
observance of a certain number of acts by which cus- 
tom has settled it that the existence of a Divine Being 
shall be recognized, whatever in fact has come to be 
closely associated with the bare name of God, is looked 
upon as in a special degree the property of religion, 
and the tendency is that it should be regarded as exclu- 
sively so. Nowadays, for instance, there are many to 



268 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

whom it seems that keeping a specified time holy to 
God, attending a prayer-meeting, bearing testimony in 
a religious gathering, are religious acts par excellence ; 
so that a man even may be a thoroughly religious man, 
whose life is wholly selfish, or upon whose word his 
neighbors cannot rely. Not only does this have a bad 
effect in deadening and formalizing those acts upon 
which the stress is laid, but what is much worse, it 
confines religion to a very restricted and inadequate 
field, and makes it indifferent, or even antagonistic, to 
what to the majority of men must always be the larger 
and the more interesting part of life. Jesus is far from 
making any such a limitation. The sphere of religion 
is co-extensive with the sphere of human conduct. 
Religionism, as opposed to righteousness, Jesus merci- 
lessly condemns in its typical representatives, the 
Pharisees. Nothing Godward is of the least avail if 
it is not backed and fortified by the practical religion 
of neighborly love. The gift is to be left unhesitat- 
ingly upon the altar till the reconcilement is brought 
about, for not till then will the worship be accepted. 

Closely akin to this, there is the avoidance in Jesus' 
ideal of the fault which is distinctively a religious 
fault, and which to a deeply religious mind has a 
peculiar charm, the tendency to asceticism. It is true 
that there are a few passages which have been thought 
to show just this tendency in Jesus, but there is the 
whole spirit of his sayings to set over against these. 
Nothing is more evident from Jesus' words taken as a 
whole than the genialness of the man, his ready 
sympathy with all the varied forms of popular life, his 
quick eye for nature and his keen delight in natural 
beauty. Moreover, so far was he from adopting in his 
own mode of life the ascetic habit, and such a 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 269 

contrast was he to the austere and gloomy John, that 
it offered a handle to the Pharisees for their taunt of 
glutton and winebibber. This is really decisive as to 
the tone which characterized Jesus, and there is nothing 
that can be brought up on the other side that is suffi- 
cient to make one come to any different conclusion. 
To be sure Jesus does recognize the disparity in the 
value of things, that what is good may not be what is 
best, and he insists upon the supreme obligation of 
what is highest and noblest. Jesus recognizes too that 
even good things may by force of circumstance become 
an evil, and then, he says, get rid of them at whatever 
cost. " If thy hand or thy foot cause thee to stumble, 
cut them off and cast them from thee." But this is 
far from saying that a hand is not in itself a pre-em- 
inently desirable thing, or that its loss does not leave 
one maimed and imperfect. In the matter of wealth, 
to take the example which is most often brought up 
against Jesus, he declares, what is a simple matter of 
fact, that it is hard for the rich man to enter into the 
kingdom of heaven, that the eager pursuit of wealth, 
and the lassitude which comes with the possession of 
wealth, do not naturally, in the case of the average 
man, make for a temper of mind to which devotion to 
the higher interests and capacities, to the things of the 
kingdom of heaven, as Jesus puts it, is of supreme 
importance. But while Jesus requires everything to be 
made tributary to the service of God, to be held in 
readiness, that is, to be used as love to God and love to 
man, and not selfish interest, may demand, there is 
nothing to show that he thought of imposing any hard 
and fast program on his followers, according to which 
they were literally to give up what they possessed. 
The sayings which seem to imply this are most of 



2 jo The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

them due to Luke, who doubtless himself had some 
such notion. 

Still less is there any reason to suppose that Jesus 
saw anything unworthy in the marriage relation ; on 
the contrary he gives to it all the sacredness which 
comes from a divine sanction. It probably is of him- 
self that he is thinking when he speaks to his disciples 
of those who have made themselves eunuchs for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake. It was because his work 
was to him before all things sacred, and because noth- 
ing else had the right to interfere with this, that he 
himself had never married. But he expressly states 
this, not as a general rule, but as something which 
exceptional circumstances, which each one must judge 
of for himself, may make best for a man ; and one 
may even catch a note of wistful sadness in the saying, 
as if Jesus knew in himself that a ' ' eunuch for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake "was something to which 
one's natural inclinations did not lead, but which one 
must ' ' make himself, ' ' an attainment not naturally or 
easily come by. The only passage which really seems 
to show a different temper is the saying to a would-be 
follower, when he asked permission first to go and 
bury his father. This on the surface does not show 
the mild and sympathetic spirit of Jesus, and if the 
circumstances were no more nor less than those which 
are reported, the harshness of Jesus is scarcely to be 
defended. Nevertheless it is not difficult to suppose 
that if we knew just the facts of the case the words of 
Jesus would have a different complexion, and some 
such modifying circumstances perhaps we may conjec- 
ture, so as to bring the passage into harmony with the 
rest of Jesus' sayings. The similar incident with 
which Luke follows this is still more foreign to Jesus' 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 2 7 1 

character, and Luke's authority is not enough to create 
any presumption in favor of its genuineness. 

Joyfulness is therefore a conspicuous thing in the 
character of him who has been instructed into the 
kingdom of heaven. Jesus' religion is something de- 
cidedly cheerful and hopeful. Blessedness is the key- 
note to it, the children of the bride-chamber perforce 
must rejoice, it is like to hid treasure for the eager de- 
light of possession. Of late, it has been rather the 
fashion to be suspicious of happiness as a motive, and 
only to find those actions deserving of respect which 
have no taint of recompense in any way attached to 
them, but which are based solely on a stern and stoical 
sense of duty. And it is true, of course, that when 
our happiness is the end we have direct in view, it is 
only selfishness we are acting out, however it may be 
disguised. Nevertheless the paradox always remains 
that happiness must have its part in a completed ideal 
of humanity, and that, without usurping the place of 
supreme importance, its influence must nevertheless 
be felt indirectly throughout the whole range of human 
activity, by giving a tinge of hopefulness, and by 
guarding against any gloomy and despairing view of 
life, such as it is inevitable will weaken the springs of 
action in the larger part of mankind. Popular religion 
is apt to err in the direction of a more or less thinly 
disguised selfishness, by the emphasis which it lays 
upon the idea of reward in another life. Jesus guards 
against both faults, at once by the balance which he 
maintains between the two motives of a desire for hap- 
piness and a naked sense of duty, and partly also by 
the nature of the happiness which he promises. It is 
not often, when Jesus is urging some definite duty 
upon men, that we find him making much appeal to 



272 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

the desire for happiness ; he prefers that they should 
make their fight and gain their victory as much as pos- 
sible on the lines of simple right and wrong. And on 
the other hand he does not tell his disciples that the 
desire to be happy is something selfish and culpable, 
but he dwells just enough upon this desire, and the 
certainty of its accomplishment, to keep men from de- 
spondency, and to fill them with a general cheeriness 
and healthfulness of moral tone which shall stand them 
in the time of actual struggle. And besides this the 
joy which Jesus promises is less frequently the some- 
what external and arbitrary reward which makes the 
most appeal to self-seeking, than the more delicate and 
quiet joy which lies wrapped up in right-doing itself, 
the joy of generosity, of self-sacrifice, of helpfulness 
towards men and peace with God. For in its practical 
working such a reward is no subtle bait to entice men 
to goodness, but only after the spirit of sacrifice has 
been won by a joyless struggle does the joy which it 
brings become a real and living motive, capable of 
influencing to action. 

Another characteristic of the ideal of life which 
Jesus sets up is the way in which he goes to the bot- 
tom of things, and devotes his attention to the inner 
springs of action rather than to outward conduct 
alone. When it is said that Jesus' teaching had chiefly 
to do with morality, the assertion is apt to meet with 
disapproval in certain circles at the present day, in con- 
sequence of the fact that the word morality, in its re- 
ligious use, has come to have a somewhat anomalous 
meaning. The moral man, in religious language, is 
the man just with a veneer of decency, which prevents 
him from getting into the penitentiary, but which does 
not come from the fulness of life and character within. 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 273 

It is this too external conception of what righteousness 
is, which has done much in keeping up the intermina- 
ble discussions as to the relative value of faith and 
works in a man's salvation, and which has been the 
truth at the bottom of the constant contention of reli- 
gious teachers, that morality alone will not save a man. 
Now Jesus does away at once with the whole ground 
of dispute by basing salvation not upon conduct, but 
upon character. When a man gets so that he not only 
does right but loves right, when he not merely keeps 
from committing murder but has no disposition to be 
angry with his neighbor, when he no longer simply 
keeps his lust from mastering him in outward acts but 
is absolutely pure in heart, there is no higher salvation 
than this, the growth of a man into the divine char- 
acter. And this is the goal which Jesus constantly 
has in view, and than which he is satisfied with noth- 
ing less. 

The principle which lies at the bottom of the de- 
mands which Jesus makes of the citizen of the new 
kingdom may be summed up in the one word, unselfish- 
ness. No longer is each man to make of his own petty 
self the centre of the universe, and toil and plan for his 
own individual interests first of all ; he must recognize 
that beside him stands his brother, whose welfare and 
interests have just as great a value as his own, and 
that his true life consists, not in living to himself alone, 
but in the larger and freer life of the whole, where in- 
dividual interests are seen with the truer vision of 
universal love. Without trying to follow Jesus out in 
all the applications which he makes of this principle, 
we may close with a brief examination of the doctrine 
which illustrates it in the most thorough- going way, 
and which is altogether one of the most original ele- 



2 74 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

ments in Jesus' ethical teaching, his doctrine of retalia- 
tion. Jesus' expression of this doctrine has sometimes 
been found to furnish difficulty, chiefly because enough 
attention has not been paid to his ordinary manner of 
teaching. What does Jesus mean ? When one injures 
us, are we actually to invite him to repeat the inj ury ? 
Are wrongs absolutely to go unpunished. Is universal 
and unquestioning giving what Jesus would have ? At 
once we feel the difficulty of this, and we see how dan- 
gerous it might become if it were faithfully carried out. 
But it is evident that this is not what Jesus meant, evi- 
dent from the very sermon of which the passage on 
retaliation is a part. It is the foundation of Jesus' 
teaching that he insists on principles rather than on 
particular applications. He does not say to men, 
Under these circumstances do so and so ; under those 
circumstances act in the opposite way ; but he shows 
the motive which is to guide them, whatever the cir- 
cumstances may happen to be, because he recognizes 
that no man can possibly prescribe to his neighbor just 
what his actions ought to be, but at best can only give 
him the clue which will enable him to decide for him- 
self. So in this sermon it is Jesus' special aim to get 
back of the particular requirements of the old law to 
the underlying principles, and this very purpose he 
would have defeated if he had only substituted other 
special requirements instead. Only, instead of putting 
these principles in an abstract form, he chooses some 
concrete example to illustrate them in a striking and 
even at times exaggerated way, that they may strike 
home upon the imaginations of his hearers. But he no 
more means that of necessity we are to turn the other 
cheek to the one who strikes us, than that we are 
actually to pluck out the eye or sever the limb which 



Jesus Doctrine of God and Man. 275 

causes us to stumble. What then, is the principle 
which by these examples he is trying to express ? 

We have seen the thing that Jesus does not mean : 
he does not mean that wrong-doing shall go on quite 
without restraint and check. He does not say that 
society shall not protect itself, and make it difficult and 
dangerous for wrongs to be committed ; indeed, he 
probably is not thinking of society at all. And so, in 
the same way, if in any case by punishing an act of 
personal wrong done to himself, a man should so be 
able to protect himself and society in the future, to this 
also Jesus' words would not apply. We shall begin 
to see what Jesus has in mind if we recognize the pur- 
pose that belongs to punishment. For there are two 
very different ways in which one may look at punish- 
ment ; there is punishment which has some greater 
good in view behind it, and there is punishment just 
for punishment's sake. It may be that by punishing 
a wrong, a man can bring about his neighbor's good, 
that he can deter the wrongdoer from going farther 
in the way which, after all, will bring most harm to 
himself; and then, of course, punishment would be 
the very best proof of love that he could give. But 
punishment that is not based upon love, retaliation, 
a mere penalty, so much suffering received for so 
much given, this is what Jesus forbids ; the spirit of 
love that seeks one's neighbor's best good, is the prin- 
ciple he lays down in its stead. No doubt the doc- 
trine seems a very hard one ; indeed, there are few 
things which the ordinary man is less ready to accept. 
What, we say, are we not to have our rights ? are we 
to suffer injuries without resenting them ? are we not 
to get justice for ourselves ? No, says Jesus, how- 
ever natural your feeling may be, so long as you stand 



276 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

upon your rights you are not a follower of mine. For 
in so doing you still are making yourself the centre, 
whereas I command you to give up your own indi- 
vidual life for the principle of love that shall take in 
your neighbor as well. It is this very feeling which 
seems so natural to you against which, first of all, my 
principle is directed. Not that the feeling of indigna- 
tion and of protest is wholly wrong. We feel that we 
are right to be indignant at injustice and oppression ; 
we burn at wrongs done to the helpless. But however 
well this may be in the abstract, we know that as a 
matter of fact, and particularly where it is ourselves 
that are wronged, there usually is something quite 
different that comes in. It is not pure indignation at 
injustice which prompts a man to pay his enemy back, 
it is his wrong, it is anger that he should be de- 
frauded and his rights disregarded, it is resentment 
that is personal and vindictive ; and this resentment 
Jesus' principle forbids just as truly as it forbids an 
outward act of retaliation, because resentment just as 
truly as retaliation is contrary to love. Many a man 
has said to himself, I will not pay my enemy back, as 
he deserves, though I should very much like to do it, 
if it were not forbidden ; but I wash my hands of him 
from this time forth, and he need expect no more 
favors from me. But how much better is he, measured 
by Jesus' principle, than his neighbor who paj^s his 
debts by knocking his enemy down ? What that prin- 
ciple forbids is not only the expression of resentment, 
but resentment itself, even more truly ; what it enjoins 
is the spirit of love which lays up no grudge for inju- 
ries, which always is ready with help and with for- 
giveness. 

And so we have the culminating stage of Jesus' doc- 



yesus Doctrine of God and Man. 277 

trine of human character. It is not so very difficult to 
be honest in business, to treat our neighbors fairly and 
justly, to abstain from cheating them when we have 
the chance, to live purely and honorably. It is easy 
to love those who love us, to bear kindly feelings 
and give generous help to those who are courteous and 
honorable in their dealings, pleasant neighbors and 
good friends. But to love our enemies, to bless them 
that curse us, to look on and see what we take to be 
our rights trampled upon, and resist the desire to 
make the offender smart for his deeds, to do this with- 
out a particle of resentment and ill-feeling, and to be 
ready, however often we may be ill-treated and our 
good offices spurned, to offer our help again when the 
help is needed, how very hard it seems to us ; how 
often we are tempted to say such virtue is out of hu- 
man reach. And yet this is the ideal which Jesus sets ; 
and he sets it, not as an ideal which is beautiful and 
admirable, but which a man, if he finds it a little too 
hard, may set aside and be content with something 
just a little easier, but as the necessary goal of every 
man's attainment. For Jesus nothing less than per- 
fection will suffice. ' ' Ye therefore shall be perfect, 
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 




CHAPTER VI. 

THE FUTURE OF THE KINGDOM. 

IT is one of the difficult things about Jesus' teaching, 
perhaps on the whole the most difficult question of 
all, precisely what it was that Jesus believed about 
the future of the kingdom which he had come to found. 
It is not the case here, as it is in other aspects of his 
teaching, that on one side is a belief which we can 
determine with practical certainty that Jesus held, and 
on the other side a few passages which conflict with 
this ; at any rate the conflicting passages are much 
more evenly divided, and there is considerably more 
reason to hesitate before settling upon which set of them 
is to be preferred. It is not strange that this should be 
so, for it is about the future that the religious fancy 
most inveterately plays, and for the early generations 
of the Christians in particular the apocalyptic elements, 
brought over from Judaism into Christianity, possessed 
a peculiarly intense interest, which could not fail to 
influence materially the tradition of Jesus' words. It 
will be well therefore to begin somewhat cautiously 
with those passages which are best assured. 

According to our Gospels, which here seem to be 
following Mark, Jesus began immediately after Peter's 
confession at Csesarea Philippi to warn his disciples of 

278 



The Future of the Kingdom. 279 

his approaching death ; and in connection with this 
there is an incident in which he rebukes Peter, because 
Peter will not recognize such a possibility. This 
narrative, it is true, can scarcely be depended on. 
Mark's authority is never of the best, and the fact that 
here, as usual, he constructs his picture out of material 
which he gets piecemeal from his source, and puts in 
Jesus' mouth words which tradition already had told 
of more appropriately in the answer to the devil in the 
wilderness, is still further against him. Nevertheless 
all that it is important for us to establish, the fact that 
Jesus looked forward to his own death, is contained in 
the words by which, just before, Jesus commends 
Peter. The Church which Jesus himself had not been 
able to found shall still be founded, now that the dis- 
ciples have recognized the central thought of his 
teaching ; theirs is the task of realizing it as an actual 
community, of determining what its external form and 
polity shall be. Here certainly Jesus looks to the ex- 
tension of his kingdom ; and because to the disciples 
and not to himself is left the authority, it is an exten- 
sion which is to take place after he is dead. And there 
is no difficulty in this. If Jesus' idea of the Messiah- 
ship was wholly spiritual, and not material at all, there 
was nothing to make his own death impossible for him 
to think of, while an insight much less keen than his 
own must have shown him that from the Pharisees he 
stood in serious danger. No doubt the Evangelists 
have made his predictions much more definite than 
they really were, and indeed we have no direct predic- 
tion of death which is worth a great deal. The only 
case for which much can be said, barring a few re- 
corded just before his betrayal which will be examined 
in another place, is the parable of the bridegroom, 



280 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

and probably from the parable of the bridegroom we 
are not safe in drawing any but the most general con- 
clusion. The parable is not meant definitely as an 
allegory of Jesus and his disciples ; what Jesus means 
to say is that expression of sorrow will come with the 
time of sorrow, and he illustrates this by an example 
taken from every-day life, although it may be indeed 
that he is casting a side-glance at himself. There is, 
however, sufficient evidence that Jesus prepared his 
disciples for a ministry in which his own previous 
death was clearly implied. Even here, it is true, we 
cannot rely upon every passage. The passage in 
Matthew, for instance, upon Church discipline, is 
shown both on critical grounds and by internal evi- 
dence to be of later origin; and the last Beatitude, 
which speaks of persecutions which the disciples are 
to endure — evidently with the supposition that Jesus 
no longer is with them, — in all probability is an inter- 
polation. Jesus has been speaking of the blessings 
which are to come into the lives of the needy through 
the knowledge of the kingdom, of the void which the 
kingdom is to fill ; and now it is an entirely forced 
transition to pass over at once to the rewards for cer- 
tain unpleasant things which only are to come some- 
time in the future. The only bond between the two is 
that they both refer to physical sufferings. But with- 
out leaning upon these passages, the words to Peter 
are enough to prove the point, and to this may be 
added in particular the discourse upon confidence in 
God. 1 Here Jesus assumes that the teaching which 
he has given to them in secret is after his death to be 
proclaimed openly, and that their work will not be free 
from dangers which will tempt them to deny him ; in 

1 I*uke 12 : iff. 



The Future of the Kt7igdom. 281 

its main features the discourse bears plainly the marks 
of Jesus' style. 

And in these passages, we have to notice, with an 
exception which will be spoken of afterwards, Jesus 
talks as we should expect him to talk ; he does not 
speak of a kingdom which shall be brought about by 
a visible descent from heaven and a visible judgment, 
but of a kingdom of truth, which is established by 
spreading the truth which it has been his work to 
teach. And what he implies here it is the express 
purpose of several of his parables to state. There is 
the parable of the talents : in this parable the empha- 
sis certainly is not upon any suddenness or unexpec- 
tedness in the lord's arrival, but the kingdom is made 
to centre about the use which is made of the opportu- 
nities in this life, and it has nothing to do with con- 
ditions that differ from the conditions that hold at 
present. Agreeing with this is the emphasis which 
Jesus lays upon the naturalness, the normalness of the 
kingdom's growth ; it is like a grain of mustard-seed 
and like the leaven gradually spreading through the 
lump, it falls and takes root and bears fruit, or else it 
dies away without fruition, with just as absolute a 
dependence on the natural laws of growth, as the seed 
which the sower casts from his hand. There are 
indeed two parables which seem to go against this, 
and which make the consummation of the kingdom, 
not the end of a natural process, but a violent catas- 
trophe ; but of one of these we fortunately are still able 
to detect the origin. The parable of the wheat and 
tares is connected, by its position and by the elements 
which make it up, with the parable of the growing 
seed which we find in Mark, and this suggests at once 
that they only are two varying forms of one and the 



282 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

same thing. And if we put the question in this way, 
Of two forms of a parable, one of which is simple and 
natural, and the other elaborate and allegorical, one 
of which agrees perfectly with Jesus' teaching, and the 
other disagrees with it, which is most likely to be the 
original form ? the question answers itself. The 
parable of the growing seed teaches what the parable 
of the sower teaches, the perfect naturalness of the 
kingdom's growth : the parable of the tares is pro- 
fessedly an allegory ; it teaches so many things that it 
teaches nothing clearly ; it does not represent some- 
thing taken from common life, but a perfectly strange 
and isolated case. And it is not true to life, as Jesus' 
parables are, for the servants never would have asked 
so absurd a question as to how tares came to be among 
the wheat, unless they had been quite new to farming, 
and the master could not have known an enemy had 
sown them, because, under any circumstances, tares 
were likely to spring up. Indeed the parable, together 
with the similar parable of the net and fishes, betrays 
its late origin by the way in which it presupposes an 
organized Church, in which the good and the evil are 
mixed up together. Jesus never thought of the king- 
dom in this way, not because he could not see that evil 
would get into the Church, but because in just so far 
it would have ceased for him to be the kingdom, 
because it was the kingdom only as it embodied right- 
eousness. 

And what from Jesus' parables we find that he 
believed, we easily can see that he must have believed, 
if we are not to attribute to him a lack of insight which 
the rest of his teaching would not prepare us for. If 
he saw that for the present the kingdom was a king- 
dom of righteousness in which all external influence 



The Futtire of the Kingdom. 28 



j 



over men was out of place, then he must have seen that 
this forever would be so, and that it was just as impos- 
sible to set up the kingdom by coming in a cloud from 
heaven and by separating the wicked from the good, 
as it was to establish an earthly empire and to make 
men righteous by freeing them from their oppressors. 
Both alike had nothing to do with the formation of 
character, and because the kingdom had to do with 
character, everything external, every interference with 
the course of history, whether it was present or future, 
natural or supernatural, was foreign to it. Neverthe- 
less, while we may regard this as the natural deduction 
from Jesus' conception, the apocalyptic element has 
worked itself so intricately into the fabric of Jesus' 
speeches, as recorded in the Gospels, that a somewhat 
minute inquiry will be needed to clear up more effect- 
ually Jesus' connection with the doctrine which ap- 
pears all through the New Testament under the name 
of the Coming of the Son of man. 

In entering upon this discussion, the passage which 
is the crucial one, because it is least open to suspicion, 
is the discourse about watchfulness, which is found in 
both Matthew and Luke ; in Luke from the thirty-fifth 
verse of the twelfth chapter, to the forty-seventh verse. 
The first four verses of this section, we are inclined to 
think, are a mere abstract, taken from Mark and from 
the parable of the virgins, which, as Matthew seems 
to show, stood originally in this place. Briefly our 
reasons for thinking so are these : in Luke the allusion 
to burning lamps and to a marriage feast has no special 
motive, as in Matthew's parable ; the whole passage is 
confused, and hovers between the literal and the para- 
bolic ; and the action of the master is unnatural, and 
out of all proportion to that which calls it forth. But 



284 The Life and Teachings of "fesus. 

the rest of the discourse, in which Matthew and Luke 
agree and which no doubt is genuine, is what we wish 
to call attention to. Now this speaks of a Coming of 
the Son of man, but it cannot at all apply naturally to 
a single visible appearance once for all. Naturally 
this discourse, together with the parable of the virgins, 
which goes along with it, is no more than an exhorta- 
tion to constant readiness and watchfulness, and a warn- 
ing that the judgment of God is continually hanging 
over the unfaithful and the careless. " But if that 
servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his 
coming ; and shall begin to beat the menservants and 
the maidservants, and to eat and drink, and to be 
drunken ; the lord of that servant shall come in a day 
when he expecteth not, and in an hour when he know- 
eth not, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint his 
portion with the unfaithful." The Jews had a final 
judgment day for the ungodly ; Jesus' thought goes 
deeper, and with him this judgment is something which 
is occurring daily, wherever there is unfaithfulness and 
corruption, — "except ye repent ye shall all likewise 
perish. " " Whenever, ' ' says Jesus, ( ' the evil servant 
says thus in his heart ' ' ; but of a general Parousia he 
could not have said that it was sure to come whenever 
a man was neglectful of his duty. Interpreting these 
words, then, as other words of his have to be inter- 
preted, remembering that with him the outward, the 
sensuous form, is of small account, and the spirit, the 
inner meaning, is everything, we cannot well come to 
any other conclusion. The only great objection to this 
is that such a judgment is not very happily described 
as a Coming of the Son of man. This title has too 
decidedly an apocalyptic coloring to make it very proba- 
ble that Jesus deliberately should have chosen it, when 



The Future of the Kingdom. 285 

he saw, as he must have seen, how likely it was to lead 
his followers away from the right track. There is no 
need, however, that this title should be retained against 
the obvious meaning of the passage. One of the verses 
in which it occurs is found again in the more general 
form, "Ye know not the day nor the hour " ; and the 
other verse, " Be ye therefore also ready, for in an hour 
when ye think not the Son of man cometh," is of the 
nature of a moral or deduction drawn from Jesus' para- 
ble, and we have seen that such express explanations 
are always to be suspected. But if in this passage, 
where Jesus speaks so distinctly of judgment and of 
the necessity of watchfulness, he yet repudiates, to all 
intents, the doctrine of a supernatural coming, we are 
justified in approaching the passages in which such a 
doctrine does clearly show itself with an added cau- 
tion, ready to reject them, without very much cere- 
mony, in case they fail to produce pretty decided 
evidence to support their claims. 

And of these passages, the parable of the unjust 
judge, which is found in Luke alone, need hardly 
come into consideration, because it is in the last degree 
doubtful whether it represents what Jesus really said. 
This parable, or at any rate the turn which is given to 
it by Luke, reveals clearly a later time. Men are 
beginning to despair of Christ's coming, they are pray- 
ing for vengeance upon their persecutors, faith seems 
likely to be driven from the earth. How else are we 
to account for the combination of a long delay and a 
speedy vengeance, unless we have the words of a man 
for whom the delay was in the past, the speedy ven- 
geance in the future ? Then too, if Jesus spoke these 
words, he taught his disciples to pray for vengeance 
upon their enemies, and this also cannot be admitted. 



286 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

The body of the parable may indeed be genuine, but 
if it is genuine it only is meant to show, like the 
parable of the friend and the loaves, the difference 
between man's unwillingness and the willingness of 
God. But what, unless it can be accounted for, is 
really fatal to the view we have advanced, is the long 
chapter which is concerned entirely with the second 
coming of Christ. This is given by all of the Evan- 
gelists, but if the three accounts are compared, it will 
be found that Matthew as usual has added much that 
does not belong here, and that the discourse originally 
stood much as it stands in Mark at present ; and so we 
shall follow Mark's form to avoid confusion. 

The meaning of this discourse as it stands in Mark 
cannot fairly be questioned. Jesus with much detail 
predicts the fall of Jerusalem and the prodigies which 
are to attend it, and immediately after the catastrophe 
he says that he is to appear in the clouds of heaven, to 
put an end to existing things, and to introduce a new 
era, an everlasting reign of the saints. If language is 
to have any meaning it is quite impossible to spiritual- 
ize the passage, or to get awa)^ from the fact that the 
event which it predicts is to come about within a 
moderate period of time, before the end of the 
existing generation. Before criticising this, however, 
it will be necessary to look at two other isolated 
sayings in the Gospels which have the same point of 
view. One of these comes in a collection of sayings 
which Mark has made, and which we will give entire. 

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and 
take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save 
his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my 
sake and the gospel's shall save it. For what doth it profit a 
man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life ? For what 



The Future of the Kingdom. 287 

should a man give in exchange for his life ? For whosoever 
shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and 
sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him, 
when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy 
angels. Verily I say unto you, There be some here of them 
that stand by, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see 
the kingdom of God come with power. Mark 8 : 34 — 9 : 1. 

Now this account has uo independent value ; it is 
made up after Mark's fashion out of sayings which he 
has found in his source. The first two verses have 
their true place in Luke, 1 and the thirty-eighth verse is 
probably only a crude form of the sajdng which already 
has been met with, ' ' Whosoever shall deny me before 
men, him will I also deny before my Father which is 
in heaven. ' ' The last verse therefore cannot be insisted 
on as if it were undoubtedly genuine, and if we find 
that this verse also could have been taken from Mark's 
source, we cannot hesitate to do so. And clearly it 
only is another way of saying what actually we find in 
the chapter on the second coming, ' ' This generation 
shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled." 
The other saying which we have spoken of involves a 
somewhat more complicated problem, and one which 
requires some knowledge of the Gospel relations if it is 
to be made clear ; nevertheless we shall try to make it 
as plain as possible. In both Matthew and Luke there 
is found a discourse against the fear of men, which up 
to a certain point agrees in both Gospels, 2 and in both 
Gospels, in connection with this discourse, there is also 
another saying, which appears too in the chapter on the 
second coming, ' ' Be not anxious what ye shall speak, for 
it shall be given you in that same hour what ye ought 



1 Luke 14 : 26, 27 ; cf. Matt. 10 : 37-39. 
- Matt. 10 : 26-33 ; Luke 12 : 1-9. 



288 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

to speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of 
your Father which speaketh in you," — only in Luke 
this saying follows the discourse, while in Matthew it 
precedes. This saying therefore, we conclude, was 
connected with the discourse in the source from which 
Luke and Matthew both draw ; but who is right, Luke 
who puts the saying after, or Matthew who places it 
before ? Luke in all likelihood is right and for this 
reason, that the discourse naturally opens with the 
saying with which Luke makes it open, ' ( There is 
nothing covered that shall not be revealed, or hid that 
shall not be known ' ' ; while Matthew, in putting this 
saying in the middle of the discourse, gives it an ex- 
ceedingly poor connection. And this leads to another 
question. The saying about reliance upon the spirit 
of God occurs also, as we said before, in the chapter on 
the second coming, and the whole connection which it 
has in this chapter Matthew gives in the passage with 
which we now are concerned. 

But beware of men : for they will deliver you up to councils, 
and in their synagogues they will scourge you ; yea, and before 
governors and kings shall ye be brought for my sake, for a tes- 
timony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you 
up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak. For it shall be 
given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye 
that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you. 
And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his 
child : and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them 
to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my 
name's sake : but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be 
saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the 
next : for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone through 
the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. A disciple is 
not above his master, nor a servant above his lord. It is enough 
for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his 
lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, 
how much more shall they call them of his household ! 



The Future of the Kingdom, 289 

All but the last two verses of this passage are found 
in the discourse about the second coming. Was then 
the passage original in its present connection, and was 
it borrowed to form a part of the discourse on the sec- 
ond coming? or, on the other hand, was its original 
place in the chapter on the second coming, which bor- 
rowed only the one verse about reliance upon the 
Spirit, and did the first Evangelist, meeting with this 
verse, and remembering its connection in another place, 
turn to this place and quote the entire passage ? 

We have little hesitation in saying that the verses 
about which we are in doubt are very much better 
suited to their connection in the chapter on the second 
coming, and agree perfectly with the general style of 
that chapter. But in the discourse about freedom from 
fear the atmosphere we must feel is different. The 
sayings are in Jesus' free and plastic style ; there is no 
minute prediction of definite events : ' ' What ye hear in 
the ear, proclaim upon the housetop " ; ' ' Are not two 
sparrows sold for a farthing ? and not one of them 
shall fall to the ground without your Father. ' ' Com- 
pare these with the other sayings, " They will deliver 
you up to their councils, and they will scourge you in 
the synagogues, and ye shall be brought before govern- 
ors and kings for my sake " ; " Children shall rise up 
against their parents and cause them to be put to 
death " ; "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name' s 
sake, but he that endureth to the end, the same shall 
be saved " : is it not easy to see the difference at once ? 
Moreover when we let these sayings fall away we 
have an excellent connection left. ' ' Whosoever shall 
confess me before men, him will I also confess before 
my Father which is in heaven ; and whosoever shall 

deny me before men, him will I also deny before my 
19 



290 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

Father which is in heaven. And be not anxious what 
ye shall sa3', for it shall be given you in that same hour 
what ye ought to say," — it is in connection with con- 
fessing Jesus before men that the saying has its mean- 
ing. Then the last two verses make a fitting close : 
' ' The disciple is not above his master, or the servant 
above his lord. ' ' We know that these verses were in 
the source, because I,uke gives them in another con- 
nection, although his connection is an impossible one. 
In this case however the remaining verse, which is 
the one we have been aiming at in all this discussion, 
must also fall away : ' ' When they persecute you in 
one city, flee into another, for ye shall not have gone 
through the cities of Israel till the Son of man be 
come." This does not suit the rest of the discourse, 
for it is not poetry, but a bald and literal prediction ; 
it probably was suggested in the same way in which 
the saying in Mark was suggested, and had its special 
form determined by the discourse on the sending out 
of the twelve Apostles, which Matthew places just be- 
fore. This very fact, that the saying, "Ye shall not 
have gone through the cities of Israel," points so un- 
mistakably to the mission of the disciples from city 
to city, not to Samaria or heathendom, but to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel, is enough to show that 
the saying could not have belonged to a discourse 
which originally could have had no sort of connection 
with this mission of the Twelve, because it had to do, 
not with events in Jesus' lifetime, but with events after 
his death. 

To the chapter on the second coming, therefore, 
everything goes back ; and of this chapter what are we 
to say ? So much at any rate, that of all the speeches 
which are attributed to Jesus, this has the very least 



The Future of the Kingdom. 291 

in its favor. The style is utterly unlike Jesus' style, 
and only here and there do we find a touch which re- 
minds us in the least of him. The whole is a list of 
literal predictions, such a list as one living in the midst 
of the events would be likely to draw up ; there is no 
trace of spiritual truth, but everything refers to out- 
ward events ; much is made up of Old Testament 
quotations ; and other discourses have occasionally 
been used. And when it is considered, in addition, 
that there is no reconciling this with others of Jesus' 
teachings, it is not too much to say, that, in its present 
form, the discourse cannot possibly have come from 
him. There is much probability in the conjecture that 
we have here a little Apocalypse, which the Evangelist 
has inserted in his book, and which it is possible that 
tradition points to when it speaks of a divine revelation 
which warned the Christians to flee from the doomed 
city. At any rate, it probably was written when de- 
struction was impending. ' But still is it not possible 
that some real reminiscence of Jesus' words lies at the 
bottom of the discourse ? may not Jesus at least have 
predicted the fall of Jerusalem, and may he not have 
said that, while the day and hour were unknown to 
him, the catastrophe was likely to come before that 
generation should have passed away ? In itself there 
is nothing impossible in this ; Jesus reproached his 
countrymen because they could not read the signs of 
the times, and he surely may have had the wit to read 
them better. And if his predictions were made a little 
more circumstantial, if an event so astounding it was 
thought, must usher in the coming of the Son of man 
himself then the chapter is sufficiently accounted for. 
But w hat tells strongly even against this is the absence 
1 Cf. Mk. 13 : 14. 



292 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

of any reference to such a prediction in the rest of the 
New Testament, although there are places where such 
a reference would seem unavoidable. The Apocalypse 
has to do with just this circle of ideas, and here the 
destruction of the Temple seems to be excluded ; at 
any rate the writer hardly could have avoided giving 
us a hint of it, if he had been acquainted with such a 
prediction from the mouth of Jesus. And in the letters 
to the Thessalonians also, the prediction hardly would 
have been ignored altogether, and a knowledge of it 
must have put some check upon the restlessness and 
uncertainty of the early Church. 

With the great discourse on the second coming out 
of the way, the backbone of the argument for such a 
belief on Jesus' part is broken. Nevertheless there 
still remains one passage which deserves consideration. 
This is the discourse which is found in the seventeenth 
chapter of L,uke, and which Matthew also gives in a 
very disjointed way, which also has to do with the 
coming of the Son of man. There are a few foreign 
elements which seem to have got attached to this pas- 
sage : the twenty-fifth verse looks like a gloss by the 
Evangelist ; the thirty -third belongs to another dis- 
course, and here does not have its real meaning ; and 
the warning which is given in the thirty -first verse is 
found also in the great chapter on the second coming, 
where it has reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
and is appropriate enough, while here it does not fit in 
well with the concluding verses. The catastrophe 
could not have been so sudden as these verses repre- 
sent it, and still have given an opportunity for flight. 
But the rest of the discourse gives a fairly consistent 
picture : Jesus warns his disciples not to be led astray 
by their longing for his coming, for when the time 



The Future of the Kingdom. 293 



does really come, there will be no possibility of mistake 
about it. And the time will not come when men are 
looking for it, but when they are careless and secure. 
By a somewhat violent feat of interpretation, it is pos- 
sible to make even this agree with the results which 
already have been obtained from Jesus' teaching. 
1 ' Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be 
gathered together, ' ' is the way in which the discourse 
comes to an end ; and we might take this as containing 
in a nutshell the whole point of the passage, and as 
meaning simply this : wherever corruption is, there 
judgment is hanging over it, sudden, visible to all ; 
and in this judgment the coming of the Son of man 
consists. And this essentially is what we have found 
already that Jesus taught. Nevertheless, however 
tempting this may be, it will have to be set aside. The 
coming of the Son of man, as has been said, is not a 
natural name for such a judgment, and the comparison 
with lightning refers unmistakably to an appearance 
such as the early Church conceived of it. There is 
nothing for it, then, but to give up this discourse as 
well, for, left alone as it is, it cannot stand out against 
the presumption which has been raised against the 
doctrine which it sets forth. And apart from the fact 
that it does not show very distinctly the marks of 
Jesus' style, there is one point in particular to be made 
against it. It is connected by L,uke with the incident 
in which the Pharisees ask Jesus about the time of the 
kingdom's appearance, and this incident is so very 
characteristic, it shows Jesus' point of view so clearly 
in distinction from the later point of view, that it can- 
not easily be rejected. But the narrative which con- 
ceives of the kingdom as a future and supernatural 
thing, becomes decidedly more improbable when we 



294 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

find that it has got placed alongside a narrative in 
which the kingdom stands out plainly as a present and 
natural thing ; the connection at any rate cannot be 
retained. Moreover it appears that the discourse on 
the coming of the Son of man has borrowed from the 
other, and this is sufficient to condemn it. " Ye shall 
not say, 1,0 here, or, L,o there," says Jesus to the Phari- 
sees ; and he means that the kingdom has no external 
marks or boundaries to know it by. But, in the other 
saying, ' ' Then if they shall say unto you, L,o here, 
or, IyO there, ' ' all the poetry has gone out of the phrase, 
and instead of being a picturesque way of putting an 
abstract statement, it is simply the prophecy of a literal 
fact. And this repetition of a phrase in a different atmos- 
phere, so that the meaning of it is changed, of itself 
goes far to throw doubt upon the passage where the 
repetition occurs. 

All this therefore leads to the conclusion that Jesus 
did not look for any supernatural appearance which 
was to change violently the course of the world, but 
that he regarded the growth of his kingdom as a silent 
and natural growth by which human society should 
gradually be transformed. Doubtless he also had a 
doctrine of last things, but precisely what form this 
doctrine took in his mind it perhaps is not possible to 
determine with the little evidence we have. In two or 
three passages Jesus makes use of the conception of a 
final judgment-day, but it is not likely we can attribute 
to him safely anything beyond the kernal of this doc- 
trine, any more than in the case of the doctrine of 
Gehenna, which Jesus also makes use of in figurative 
passages. The only exception to this is in the great 
judgment scene which is found in Matthew ; but while 
this naturally seems to show a belief in a literal judg- 



The Future of the Kingdom. 295 

ment-day, it hardly is to be attributed to Jesus, in spite 
of the undeniable beauty of its teaching. Two doc- 
trines appear in the passage, which were held to 
strongly in later times, but which it is improbable that 
Jesus taught : the coming of the Son of man, and the 
eternal punishment of the wicked in its most literal 
sense. Likewise the kingdom is spoken of in a man- 
ner very unusual with Jesus, as something belonging 
to the future ; and the position of supremacy which 
Jesus is made to assume in relation to his followers, 
and the recognition of this supremacy among all na- 
tions, is as little like Jesus' ordinary tone as it is per- 
fectly in accord with later theologies, in which Jesus' 
Messiahship had taken the place of first importance, 
and when the Gospel had spread over the world. The 
imagery moreover does not show the taste of Jesus, for 
the abrupt interjection of the metaphor of the sheep 
and goats, while the rest of the passage is literal, is a 
fault which Jesus never would have been guilty of. 
The objective way in which Jesus is spoken of through- 
out makes it probable that whoever first was the author 
of the passage did not intend it should be put in Jesus' 
mouth. That Jesus did believe in a future world is 
put beyond doubt by the argument in favor of it which 
he addresses to the Sadducees. The argument is 
probably not the merefy verbal argument which at 
first sight it might seem to be, for Jesus is very little 
given to playing upon words. Most likely at the 
bottom of his argument there lies the thought that 
God could not thus belittle himself in solemnly declar- 
ing that he was the God of men whose ephemeral exist- 
ence had long since been cut short ; in other words, 
the fact that men stood in relationship to God pointed 
them out as immortal beings. But at any rate Jesus' 



296 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

answer throws a gleam of light upon the doctrine 
which he held, and shows that it was no sensuous and 
bodily form of life that he looked forward to, but that 
it involved a great change from human conditions. 
More than this it is hardly safe to say. And likewise 
as regards his belief about the punishment of the 
wicked, it is certain that Jesus insists upon the punish- 
ment which wrongdoing must ever bring in its train ; 
but what the nature of that punishment shall be, or 
what shall be its time relations, he does not seek to 
settle. All such speculations lie without the range of 
the eternal principles on which Jesus founded his 
beliefs. 




CHAPTER VII. 



TH£ GAUI^AN MINISTRY. 



THERE is a great temptation, in trying to recon- 
struct the details of Jesus' life, to act with 
somewhat more tenderness towards the Gospel 
narratives than can be wholly justified, and to grasp at 
whatever in particular instances may be used to save 
the credit of the story, without enough bearing in 
mind the treacherousness in general of the tradition 
which we have to do with. So long as the Gospels 
are regarded as upon the whole a credible record of 
history, a certain caution in admitting of mistakes is 
of course quite proper, though this caution often has 
been carried to extremes. If however it is admitted 
that the reports which have reached us are so thor- 
oughly honey-combed with legend, we no longer have 
the right to pretend that there is a very large or a very 
secure residue left behind. A very natural hesitancy 
about wholly giving up possessions we have cherished 
has caused men steadily to approach the Gospels with 
the thought of saving everything they were not ab- 
solutely forced to let go their hold of. Accordingly, 
if there was a narrative which in itself was not im- 
possible, they have preferred not to scrutinize too care- 
fully the company in which it is presented to them. 

297 



298 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

But this is not the method of history. The question 
of history is not, How much of our material can be 
retained without positive contradiction? but, "What 
probably is true? If the most of what a particular 
Evangelist tells us is surely legendary, and then we 
come upon something which has no great unlikelihood, 
it is not enough to say that it may be true, but we 
must have something to show pretty clearly that it 
cannot easily be otherwise. We must therefore resign 
ourselves to the conclusion, however unpalatable it 
may be, that the purely historical matter which the 
Gospels can furnish will at the best be meagre, and 
that for facts which can be depended on with perfect 
security, it will be necessary to limit ourselves pretty 
much to the actual sayings of Jesus, or to such narra- 
tives as are closely bound up with a saying. 

Probably soon after the imprisonment of John the 
Baptist Jesus entered upon the work to which he had 
given up his life. It was with no blare of trumpets 
that he went about his ministry. Moving quietly from 
place to place, mixing in the homely life of the Gali- 
lean peasants, talking of righteousness and the king- 
dom wherever he could find an audience — who was to 
guess that a new and tremendous force had come into 
the world? The Gospels are inclined to represent 
Jesus as if he had been constantly on the move, 
hurrying about through all Galilee from city to city. 
This, which is intelligible if Jesus had no deeper mes- 
sage than his own Messiahship, hardly works in so 
well with a message which required, as the message of 
the kingdom did, that it should be so drilled and ham- 
mered into men before it stood any show of true accept- 
ance ; and it is more likely, as is indicated by one of 
Jesus' sayings, that the bulk of his ministry was con- 



The Galilean Ministry. 299 

fined to a comparatively small region about the north- 
ern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and centring in the 
cities of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida. Tradi- 
tion has it, and probably has it rightly, that Capernaum 
was made in a manner the seat of his labors, although 
the statement which Matthew makes, depending partly 
upon prophecy, and which is implied in Mark as well, 1 
that Jesus had a house there, does not agree with Jesus' 
statement that the ' ' Son of man hath not a place to lay 
his head." 

It was not long before the fame of Jesus began to 
spread. Possessed as he was of a natural and win- 
ning eloquence, the curiosity of the volatile Galileans 
would quickly bring crowds together to him, and, once 
there, they would be held there by stronger bonds. 
His authority, his straightforwardness, his freedom 
from all the subtilties and trivialness of the Pharisaic 
teaching, appealed to them as earnestness and simplic- 
ity, backed by the power of righteousness and the call 
to duty, must always appeal. Jesus seems moreover 
to have had a peculiar influence over the affections of 
men. The more degraded parts of the community in 
particular, to whose despair Jesus' words of tenderness 
and forgiveness brought an unlooked-for gleam of hope, 
seem to have repaid him with a passionate love. Even 
the higher classes of the nation could not remain unaf- 
fected by the charm of one whose wit was so keen and 
whose insight so acute, and we read of one scribe at 
least who wished to be reckoned as a follower of his. 

Nevertheless Jesus' popularity did not deceive him 

for a moment into thinking that his task was to prove 

an easy one. He saw that to interest the people and 

arouse their enthusiasm was a very different thing from 

1 See Mk. 3 : 20, and c/.6\ 4. 



300 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

effecting the permanent revolution in their character 
and conceptions which he had set about doing. It was 
with this in his mind that he began to look about him 
for a closer band of disciples, whom he might keep more 
constantly under his own personal influence, and so 
might get the chance to mould to his own purposes. 
The story of the disciples belongs to the history of the 
Church, and the most general account of them will be 
sufficient here. That they were twelve in number may 
be taken as settled by Paul's testimony, and their 
names, which are given first by Mark, are so naturally 
the property of tradition, that we may take the list as 
at least approximately correct. Luke changes the 
name of Thaddaeus to Judas, though why he does so 
is uncertain, and the first Evangelist identifies Matthew 
with Levi the publican. Possibly this identification 
came about through a correct tradition that Matthew 
had been a publican ; at any rate, the identification 
itself is scarcely to be defended. For to Mark is due 
both the story of Levi and the notice of the calling of 
the Twelve, so that it is evident Mark meant to point 
them out as different men. Moreover one cannot help 
the suspicion that the Levi of Mark never had any real 
existence. To begin with, Mark's methods are so 
doubtful that the very fact a story comes from him is 
no slight evidence against it. Now it happens that in 
Luke there is a series of sayings for which the saying 
about the whole and the sick, which is connected with 
Levi's call, would furnish an excellent introduction 1 ; 
and that the saying originally did stand there is indi- 
cated by the reminiscences of it which Luke has in a 
verse of this passage which he is himself responsible 
for : ' ' There is joy over one sinner that repenteth, more 

1 See Luke 15 : iff. 



The Galilean Ministry. 301 

than over ninety and nine righteous persons who need 
no repentence. ' ' The passage begins with a statement 
that the Pharisees were murmuring because Jesus ate 
with sinners ; and it is just in Mark's fashion to take 
this up, and make it more vivid by giving a special 
instance of it, and by adding names and details. And 
this is made more probable by the resemblance which 
the abrupt and startling call of Levi has to the equally 
abrupt call of the other four disciples which Mark 
relates. In both cases it is the evident intention of the 
narrative to give dramatic force by representing the 
call as entirely without preparation, and the obedience 
as coming from the instantaneously exerted power of 
Jesus. This is without probability in itself, and the 
fact that it comes from Mark is sufficient to condemn it. 
To the training of these few disciples Jesus turned 
himself more and more, as he saw that, so far as the 
great mass of the people was concerned, he was failing 
of his purpose. The reasons for this failure appear in 
Jesus' own utterances. In the first place the people 
were too deeply immersed in their material ideals. 
' ' From the days of John the Baptist until now the 
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the men of 
violence take it by force." John had aroused the 
popular enthusiasm, but it had taken a wrong course, 
and the people were bent upon a kingdom of violence, 
of political changes. Even more however it was to 
the spiritual leaders of the nation that Jesus owed his 
lack of success : ' ' Ye have shut the kingdom of 
heaven against men," says Jesus; "ye enter not in 
yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in 
to enter ;" this is the motive of his terrible indictment 
of them. We cannot perhaps hope after these years 
to trace with very great detail the progress of the 



302 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

quarrel between Jesus and the Pharisees, but yet a 
good deal of material which bears upon that quarrel 
is still present in the Gospels, and the main lines of it 
are fairly distinct. It is not to be wondered at that 
many of the Pharisees, whose very life was in the 
reward of praise and veneration which their piety 
brought them, viewed with no very friendly eyes the 
rise of a new teacher, without the technical training of 
the Scribe, who bid fair to outstrip them all in popular- 
ity. There would be no very weighty pretext needed 
therefore to bring their religious prejudices into line 
with their personal feelings, and enable them to gloss 
over their selfishness by an appeal to the glory of God. 
They did not have to go far in order to find an occasion. 
Jesus from the very start had acted flatly in opposition 
to the notions which in the typical Pharisee's mind 
made up the sum and substance of religion. Presently 
the Pharisees began to find fault. Jesus was not keep- 
ing the traditions of the elders, they complained ; he 
was associating himself with men who must of neces- 
sity defile him : and what, reasoned the pious Pharisee, 
was any hypothetical good to the sinner in comparison 
with the honor of God's law. Again, he did not 
trouble himself or his disciples to go through with all 
the requisite washings and purifications which the 
wisdom of the Elders had devised. Jesus' disciples ate 
and drank when they should be fasting. Nay, more, 
he was even encroaching upon the sanctity of the 
Sabbath itself, and making it a cheap and common 
thing. It is unnecessary to ask in just what proportion 
sincerity and selfish passions were mingled in the 
Pharisees' complaints. No doubt they were sincere in 
their own fashion ; they really did regard Jesus as a 
dangerous leveller and heretic, who was working to 



The Galilean Ministry. 303 

destroy the religion once for all delivered to the saints. 
But this does not lessen the blame attaching to them, 
and their chiefest condemnation, as Jesus pointed out, 
was that with eyes wide open they could look upon the 
handiwork of God's own Spirit and give it to the devil, 
that they could do the devil's work and still believe 
they were offering God service. The calm and con- 
vincing answers which Jesus gave to their complaints 
they made no effort to understand, but only were irri- 
tated the more. From resenting actual violations of 
tradition on Jesus' part they began to hunt up occasions 
against him. They plied him with questions designed 
to arouse an odium theologicum, or even to bring him 
into disrepute with the authorities. And the fact that 
they always were worsted in their arguments did not 
tend to make their resentment any the less keen. 

Meanwhile Jesus apparently had gone about his 
work quietly and persistently, and had been content 
for the most part with assuming the defensive against 
his enemies. But presently there came a new move on 
the part of his opponents. Perceiving that Jesus could 
not be conquered by argument, they began to strike at 
him in a more vulnerable place, and to seek to under- 
mine his influence with the people. The worst con- 
struction was put upon his actions, and his name was 
bandied about as a glutton and a drunkard. Slanders 
began to be circulated about him, such as that he was 
an emissary of Beelzebub. It was demanded that he 
should attest his authority by miraculous means, in 
order that his failure to do so might discredit him with 
the wonder-loving populace. It was inevitable that the 
influence of those who sat in Moses' seat, and to whom 
the people had grown accustomed to look up to as their 
natural religious teachers, when cast well-nigh unani- 



304 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

mously in one direction, should in the long run bear its 
fruit. It was in vain that Jesus gave his warnings ; a 
sevenfold demon of perversity seemed to have entered 
the nation and its leaders. We become conscious of 
an altered tone in Jesus' words ; he warns them of the 
judgment which is close upon the nation unless they 
repent, a judgment pointed to by no supernatural signs, 
but by such as their own eyes might behold if they 
would but look, just as they see the signs of drought 
and rain. If the}^ will not look, if the very eye that is 
given them for light be turned to darkness, how great 
must they expect that darkness to be ! If the tree 
yields no fruit, and even after an excess of pains upon 
it shows that its usefulness is over, what advantage is 
there in its cumbering the ground? Indeed it must 
have been plain to any one not blinded by national 
partiality that heroic measures were necessary to save 
a nation thus compounded of dead formalism and blind 
fanaticism. Whether Jesus ever openly proclaimed 
that other nations were to come into the inheritance 
which Israel had refused, is a little more uncertain, but 
there can be no question that he himself realized the 
universality of his message, and the parable of the 
rich man's supper, and the discourse about the narrow 
gate, although they are not certainly genuine, are 
most likely so, and they make the announcement of the 
fact explicit. 

To Jesus we cannot doubt that these were days of 
bitter trial. In spite of their utter baselessness, the 
taunts of his enemies hurt him. In one of his later 
discourses we find, by an allusion to it, that the old 
charge about Beelzebub had not even then lost its 
sting. More and more he turned himself to the quiet 
instruction of his disciples, content to wait for the 



The Galilean Ministry, 305 

future, when what he told in the ear should by them 
be proclaimed upon the house-tops, with better chances 
of success than at the present. But even his disciples, 
though they had made a start in the right direction, 
fell sadly short of what Jesus had a right to expect 
from them. Towards the very close of his ministry 
we find two of them, fired by just the spirit of ambition 
and self-seeking which Jesus was trying so patiently to 
ween them from, asking for the places of honor in the 
kingdom, the same limited and gross old kingdom of 
an earthly ideal ; and something of a sigh still breathes 
through Jesus' words as he answers them, "Ye know 
not what ye are asking. ' ' And then all of the disciples 
begin to fight among themselves with jealous rivalry, 
and Jesus patiently goes back and gives their lesson to 
them over again once more. In his own family, too, 
it is probable that Jesus suffered. The narratives 
which Mark gives of this are indeed doubtful, but it 
may be considered likely that Mark had the fact to go 
upon, and besides, this may very well be the sense of 
the somewhat enigmatical passage which I^uke gives 
in the twelfth chapter. ' ' I came to cast fire upon the 
earth ; and what will I, if it is already kindled ? But 
I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I 
straitened till it be accomplished ! Think ye that I 
am come to give peace on the earth ? I tell you, Nay ; 
but rather division : for there shall be from henceforth 
five in one house divided, three against two, and two 
against three. They shall be divided, father against 
son, and son against father ; mother against daughter, 
and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her 
daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her 
mother-in-law." This passage probably was in the 
source, for Matthew's phrase, "cast peace," is less 



306 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

natural than "cast fire," and shows a reminiscence of 
it ; and the other phrase, ' ' a baptism to be baptized 
with," is repeated by Mark in the account of the request 
of James and John, ' where the use, contrary to Mat- 
thew, of two phrases to express a single idea, is awk- 
ward. Now if Jesus had just been suffering from hos- 
tility in his own family, this would explain his choice 
of family discord as an example of the effect the Gospel 
was to have, and it would give a more personal mean- 
ing to the opening clause. I am come to sow discord, 
says Jesus, and what right have I to complain if I am 
the first to suffer from it? It only is a part of the 
baptism of suffering which I know my work must 
bring to me. 

The Passover drew on, and Jesus determined to go 
up to Jerusalem. Whether he had visited the city 
before since his ministry opened, it seems impossible 
to say. The only passage which bears very closely on 
the question is the lament over Jerusalem, and this, in 
spite of its poetical beauty, it does not seem easy to 
attribute to Jesus. The woes against the Pharisees 
close with a highly dramatic outburst against the Jew- 
ish people. "Therefore, behold, I send unto you 
prophets, and wise men, and scribes : some of them 
shall ye kill and crucify ; and some of them shall ye 
scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to 
city : that upon you may come all the righteous blood 
shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous 
to the blood of Zachariah, whom ye slew between the 
sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All 
these things shall come upon this generation." Now 
the way in which this passage mentions scribes goes to 
show that it comes from an adherent of the Pharisees, 

1 Mk. 10 : 38. 



The Galilean Ministry. 307 

and that at least it does not belong to a discourse which 
was devoted to a condemnation of the scribes. Then 
too in no natural sense could Jesus speak of himself 
as sending to them prophets. But in Luke the passage 
opens with the words, ' ' On this account the Wisdom 
of God saith," and this expression seems to have been 
taken from the source. For not only otherwise is 
Luke's insertion of it not easy to explain, but Matthew 
also starts in with ' ' on this account, ' ' and what has 
gone before does not give the reason for the sending, 
but, as in Luke, the reason why the words are quoted. 
All the difficulty therefore is got rid of, if we suppose 
that we have here a quotation from some lost book in 
which Wisdom is represented as the speaker. Now 
the lament over Jerusalem probably is a part of the 
same passage, for Matthew places them together, and 
the style is all of a piece ; the one then who would 
have gathered the children of Jerusalem together, is 
the one who had sent prophets and wise men and 
scribes. And this enables us to let " often" have its 
proper meaning, and not limit it to the very few visits 
which at best Jesus could have made to the capital. 
And finally this explains the sentence where it is said 
that the speaker shall not again be seen until they are 
ready to greet him with the cry, " Blessed is he that 
cometh in the name of the Lord." These words only 
are appropriate in the mouth of one who is just on the 
point of turning his back upon the city of his own 
accord, as Wisdom might well be conceived as doing, 
and who refuses to return until the inhabitants shall 
have changed their minds. But if Jesus spoke them, 
and then went on to teach in the Temple, they lose 
their point, and they cannot easily be made to refer to 
a violent taking away by death. 



308 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

The Gospels clearly have the idea that Jesus went 
up to Jerusalem with a full knowledge of what was to 
befall him there. There is no likelihood in this, how- 
ever, which makes his death but little less than self- 
destruction. Nevertheless it is probable that already 
his opponents had begun to cherish the thought of 
getting rid of him by violent means. Their hatred had 
been still more inflamed by the incisive way in which 
Jesus had from time to time shown up their own 
hypocrisy and worthlessness. The last and greatest 
denunciation of them may have been brought about in 
the capital itself, but already it is likely, as in the in- 
stance when they disputed with him about the washing 
of hands, that he had let his scorn of their miserable 
casuistry, which could pervert the L,aw of God to the 
most selfish ends, lead him into a more searching criti- 
cism of their conduct than they cared to listen to. He 
had found them wanting, too, in more general parables, 
such as the parable of the two sons, and had placed 
them, at least by implication, even below the despised 
publicans. It was in Jerusalem however that the 
crisis came about at last. According to the Gospels 
the final attack of the Pharisees was brought on by an 
act on the part of Jesus^ which really was a direct 
declaration of hostility, the cleansing of the Temple ; 
and possibly the Gospels may be right in this. It is 
true that this act is not at all in the character of Jesus, 
but shows rather the spirit of the older prophets ; and 
to us it seems not only useless, but it seems needlessly 
to have provoked the hostility of his enemies. It is 
possible though that Jesus' indignation may have led 
him to do what ordinarily he would have avoided do- 
ing. What makes the account much more doubtful is 
its apparent physical impossibility. It is not easy to 



The Galilean Ministry. 309 

see how Jesus could have done what the Gospels repre- 
sent him as doing, even by making use of a violence 
which we must decidedly refuse to admit. On the 
other hand, without some foundation it is rather diffi- 
cult to see how the story got about, and there appar- 
ently is connected with it a question of the chief priests 
which by all means appears genuine, the question as to 
what authority Jesus had for acting as he did. This 
question naturally implies that Jesus had done some- 
thing out of the way, something which had aroused a 
suspicion in the minds of the rulers. Once before no 
doubt the same question practically had been put to 
him, when it was demanded that he should give a sign ; 
but there is an important difference between the two 
incidents — the question which there had been asked 
by the Pharisees as a trap for Jesus, now, if we may 
trust the account, comes from the Sadducean, the aris- 
tocratic party as well. Now it is clear that both the 
Pharisees and the Sadducees had a hand in Jesus' 
death, and the Sadducees appear to have been no less 
eager for it than their rivals. But their hostility could 
not have had the same grounds ; Jesus' attitude 
towards tradition, which gave so much offence to the 
Pharisees, might to them have been even a matter of 
satisfaction. If actually they did join the Pharisees, 
this seems only to be explained if the Pharisees had 
been able to convince them that Jesus had political 
designs, and for this some act of Jesus which would 
give color to the charge is not improbable. Therefore, 
while we do not think that the event could have been 
just as the Gospels describe it, some basis for the 
account there probably was, although we do not now 
feel able to determine just wherein this consisted. 
And now Jesus' enemies found an ally in one of 



310 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

Jesus' own disciples. What gave rise to this resolu- 
tion in Judas' mind we only can conjecture, for we 
have very little more than the fact of the betrayal to 
go upon. We can guess however motives which may 
have led him on. Judas, no more than the other disci- 
ples, came to Jesus in the first place with the idea that 
he should find in him the Messiah ; and when the other 
disciples, following in the lead of Peter, began to have 
a dawning sense of the truth about their Master, the 
new revelation only left him in bewildered uncertainty. 
For the life of him he could not dispossess himself of 
the old ideals, and that Jesus should lay claim to the 
Messianic dignity, and then go straight against all that 
he looked and hoped for from the Messiah, might 
arouse in him a feeling of protest and even of resent- 
ment. It would be harsh to blame him too unspar- 
ingly for this, in view of the fact that the other 
disciples as well had got but little farther on, and to 
the very end of their lives only had succeeded in com- 
prehending Jesus' meaning dimly. And then when 
Judas found the whole array of the piety and learning 
of the nation standing over against the new teacher, 
it might well give added strength to the doubts and 
suspicions which already had sprung up in his own 
mind. Still this does not give an adequate motive for 
his treachery, and this perhaps we are to look for in 
fears for his own personal safety. What influences 
had been brought to bear upon him we do not know, 
but it is unlikely that Judas proceeded absolutely of his 
own initiation. This, it is true, is the idea which the 
Gospels give, but the Gospels had no means of know- 
ing the inside history of the case, and naturally would 
take the alternative which was least complimentary to 
the traitor. The Pharisees must have kept a sharp 



The Galilean Ministry. 311 

eye on the little circle about Jesus, and have taken 
note of any symptoms of discontent which might be 
made to serve their purposes. Perhaps it was some 
intimation of the plans that had been set on foot that 
frightened him to action that he might keep his own 
skin whole, perhaps it was the hope of some substan- 
tial reward along with this which finally decided him 
upon his course ; at any rate the resolution was made, 
and it only was left to find a convenient opportunity. 




CHAPTER VIII. 



THE I<AST DAYS OF JKSUS. 



THE exact facts of the next few days, or weeks, as 
the case may be, are exceedingly difficult to de- 
termine, for the different sources which make up 
the substance of our Gospels are here not always easy 
to disentangle, and even when the separation is made 
and the earliest account is got at, it is hard to say 
where legend begins and history leaves off. So far as 
Matthew and L,uke are concerned, our criticism of the 
Gospels leaves us little option in giving up whatever 
can be shown to come from them. In Matthew, the 
legendary character of the additions is particularly 
pronounced, as it has many times been shown, and in 
Luke, although the case is not as self-evident, the same 
judgment must be given. The dispute about prece- 
dence, which Luke, against all inherent probability, 
assigns to the last supper, the other Gospels show took 
place on the occasion of the request of James and 
John. Again, the saying about buying a sword is 
disproven by the accompanying reference to the dis- 
course on the sending out of the disciples, which we 
have shown that Jesus never spoke. The different 
order which is given to the trial scene, is shown to be 
a displacement of the older account on which Luke is 

312 



The Last Days of Jesus. 3 1 3 

drawing, by the fact that the maltreatment of Jesus is 
made to come before his condemnation, while in 
Matthew and Mark the condemnation forms its obvious 
motive. The story of the sending to Herod, apart 
from its entire absence from the other Gospels, is a 
manifest interruption of what in the older account is 
a connected and straightforward story ; the elements 
of which it is composed, the silence of Jesus, the ac- 
cusations of the priests, the mockery of the soldiers, 
are just the elements of the other trial ; the expecta- 
tion of seeing a miracle is unwarranted if Jesus worked 
no miracles ; and the pretext which Pilate gives, that 
Jesus belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, makes it inex- 
plicable that Herod should at once have sent him 
back again. Then the story of the crucifixion is a 
confused, and at times blundering reproduction of 
Mark's account, and the additions which Luke does 
give in the sayings which Jesus is recorded to have 
uttered, it is impossible to defend, for they either have 
their basis in the Old Testament, or else in themselves 
they are extremely suspicious. The most elaborate 
addition is the incident of the dying thief ; and not 
only is this a late story, from an untrustworthy source, 
which contradicts, too, the earlier statement that both 
the robbers reviled Jesus, but the recognition of Jesus' 
Messiahship just when he was the very farthest from 
its realization in the popular sense, is out of the ques- 
tion, and, in any case, there is no likelihood that any 
of Jesus' disciples were allowed near enough to him to 
hear a conversation of such a sort. And finally, the 
circumstantial stories about the appearances of the 
risen Jesus, are, as will be seen in the next chapter, an 
absolute impossibility. 
And now, after we have disregarded Matthew and 



314 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

I/Uke, there still remains the task of tracing Mark's 
hand in what is left behind, and then again the task 
of testing rigorously the residue. We cannot hope 
then with any confidence to have more than a some- 
what meagre array of facts left to us after all is done. 
The chronology of Jesus' stay in Jerusalem, which 
apparently is due to Mark, and which makes the time 
a week, is hardly worthy of much credence. Whether 
we ought to allow a longer or a shorter time there is 
not much use in asking, although the statement that 
Jesus preached by day in the Temple and went out in 
the evening to lodge in the Mount of Olives, and the 
statement that Judas sought from that time an oppor- 
tunity to betray him, both imply that the older narra- 
tive thought of the period as at least of some little 
duration. At length, however, the Passover came, and 
for the last time Jesus sat down to eat with his disci- 
ples. 

Did Jesus know that the end was so near at hand ? It 
certainly is not impossible that he should have had 
some intimation of it, but whether he did or no must 
be determined by examining the sayings in the Gospels 
which point to such a knowledge. There are a set 
of these, beginning with the story of the anointing 
at Bethany. This story is a beautiful one, and taking 
it alone there is nothing very damaging to be said 
against it ; but for critical reasons it seems necessary 
to attribute the story to Mark. It comes in between 
two sections which naturally belong together, the two 
statements that the Pharisees sought means to put 
Jesus to death, and that they found an opportunity of 
doing this through Judas. This connection the story 
interrupts, and in addition it betrays its origin by the 
vividness of its style, and by the use of the term 



The Last Days of Jesus. 3 1 5 

svayyeXiov in a way which seems in the Gospels to 
be peculiar to Mark. If therefore we can trace the 
narrative back to Mark, it would be rash in view of 
Mark's bad reputation to allow it very much impor- 
tance ; and we may therefore turn to the other passages, 
all of which centre about the supper itself. The first 
of these, the pointing out of the traitor, has the least 
in its favor. It is not even certain whether it was 
present in the source, for it does not fit with perfect 
appropriateness into the story of the supper, and Luke, 
by deposing it from its position at the beginning, would 
rather indicate that the source proceeded directly to 
an account of the Paschal meal. And in any case the 
natural desire which tradition would feel to give to 
Jesus a foreknowledge of the traitor must constantly 
be kept in view. Again it must be remembered that 
the question is not, Is there anything which absolutely 
prevents our accepting the history as genuine ? When 
a narrative comes to us in company with so very much 
that shows the work of legend, the fact that it too can 
easily have sprung up in the same way is much the 
same as saying that for the purposes of history that is 
the explanation we are bound to give it. Now, here, 
as has been said, the motive for the incident is obvious, 
and an actual foreknowledge on Jesus' part of plans 
which Judas must have tried very hard to keep a secret, 
is not to be admitted without special reason. And 
when we add to this that the language to Judas is based 
upon the Old Testament, and that Jesus, in a way 
common to the Church, but showing a mechanical view 
of prophecy which does not appear in the authen- 
ticated sayings of Jesus himself, makes his death come 
about through a necessity that prophecy should be 
fulfilled, and apparently bases his knowledge, not on 



3 1 6 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

information, but upon this fact of prophecy, we are 
obliged to reject the account. Similarly we must 
decide in the case of the prophecy of Peter's denial. 
That Peter did deny his L,ord we may indeed sup- 
pose to be an actual fact ; but with this given it would 
be a very simple thing for tradition to dress it up and 
give to it dramatic completeness, and in pursuit of this 
to put a forewarning into Jesus' mouth. It happens 
that we have two versions of this warning, which 
indicates the amount of dependence we can place upon 
them severally ; and in the earlier version we have the 
same use of prophecy and the same conception of it 
which was found in the narrative just before. When 
therefore we find that the words of Jesus are peculiarly 
definite and show an improbable knowledge that the 
blow was to fall that very night, we must allow that 
the whole is very doubtful. 

The last case to be cited has decidedly a better at- 
testation than any of the others, and it leads to the 
somewhat larger question as to the facts about the sup- 
per as a whole. Here we may take leave of the Gos- 
pels for a moment, as we have an earlier and more 
reliable account in the letter to the Corinthians. Paul's 
account runs as follows : " For I received of the Lord 
that which also I delivered unto you, how that the 
IyOrd Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took 
bread ; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, 
and said, This is my body, which is for j^ou : this do 
in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, 
after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in 
my blood : this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remem- 
brance of me." It will be noticed that the Gospel ver- 
sion adds to this nothing essential except the words, 
" I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until 



The Last Days of Jesus. 3 1 7 

that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. ' ' 
Since this is absent from Paul's account, and since, in 
addition, it most naturally indicates a conception of 
the kingdom as something material, or apocalyptic, at 
the best, we may dismiss it from consideration. But 
even when we take the account as it stands in Paul's 
letter, there is no little difficulty connected with it. It 
is hardly possible to give any other meaning to Jesus' 
words than that he looked upon his death as a sacrifice 
for sin, which introduced a new era in the dealings of 
God with men. Now, it may be that Jesus, deeply 
impressed with the thought that- this was in all proba- 
bility his last Paschal meal, and with his natural 
tendency to figure, was struck by the resemblance of 
his own approaching death, in very truth a sacrifice 
for men, to the old sacrificial rite of Jewish worship, 
and that the wine and broken bread came to him as an 
effective way to give an object lesson to his followers, 
which at the same time should furnish a simple bond 
of union for the new spiritual community. This cer- 
tainly is not inconceivable, and yet after all one ought 
not to blind himself to the fact that such a conception 
as this lies decidedly outside the realm of thought 
which constituted Jesus' ordinary mental life. There 
is nothing to correspond to it in what we have dis- 
covered of Jesus' teaching, for the saying in Mark, 
1 ' The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for 
many," drops away when we retain the subsequent 
sentence about the twelve thrones, as is done by Luke, 1 
and is shown to be a dogmatic paraphrase of Jesus' 
words. Now there is nothing which has come out 
more clearly in our survey of Jesus' teaching than the 
manner in which he clears away all the artificialities 
1 See Luke 22 : 27. 



3 1 8 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

which had grown up about the relations between God 
and men, and gets right down to the simple and uni- 
versal principles on which the religious life is built. It 
is just for this reason that Jesus' words appeal so 
powerfully to the modern consciousness, because they 
come to us so largely unrefr acted by the medium of 
Jewish technical terminology and theological concep- 
tions. Paul also got out into the light after a good 
deal of trouble about it, but it was by an entirely dif- 
ferent path. To Paul the old artificial barriers between 
God and men, the legalities of an external covenant, 
and the complicated relationship to an external law, 
still had all their force ; and in order to get himself 
out of the meshes of a partial and mechanical Judaism, 
with which his profound religious feeling would not 
let him rest content, he had to construct an intricate 
system, in which the old legalism was beaten on its 
own ground, in which with all a lawyer's subtilty God 
was relieved from the technical difficulties in which he 
had got himself involved, and his love and care for 
men allowed free course. Jesus needed nothing of 
this, simply because his mind had been able to slip the 
artificial restraints which caused all the difficulty in the 
first place, by means of the discovery that God did not 
stand to men in the relation of magistrate and custo- 
dian of a law outside himself, but rather of a Father, 
that love on God's part, never restricted or pent up by 
mechanical devises or contracts, and on the part of 
man repentance and loving obedience which the Father 
was only too ready to meet more than half-way, left no 
room for the problems of theology which aim to do 
away with conditions which never existed. But while 
these words move in a different realm of thought from 
that in which Jesus lived, we also ought to notice that 



The Last Days of yesus. 319 

they exactly chime in with the circle of ideas in which 
Paul was more especially interested. To Paul the 
sacrificial aspects of Christ's death were a matter of a 
great deal of importance, and the " new covenant " is 
essentially a Pauline formula, about which his theology 
largely centred. 

This therefore must be borne in mind while we turn 
aside to notice a peculiar feature in Paul's account. 
This is the way in which Paul speaks of his informa- 
tion as something which he had received from the 
Lord. Now there is the possibility, which we admit, 
that Paul means nothing more by this than that it is 
to the Lord that the institution of the supper originally 
goes back ; and yet if this is what he means he cer- 
tainly has chosen a very ambiguous way of saying it. 
If Paul had wished merely to say that he was about to 
give them Jesus' words, there was an easy way for 
him to say it ; whereas the form of statement which he 
does use, the stress that is put upon himself as the 
recipient and upon the Lord as the source of informa- 
tion, inevitably gives the impression that he is speak- 
ing of something made known directly to himself. 
When in another place he gives a piece of history, the 
story of the resurrection, he talks about it in the way 
we should expect him to, while if he wishes to empha- 
size his entire independence of a human medium, as 
in the case of the principles of his Gospel, he speaks 
in the same fashion of receiving his knowledge straight 
from God and not from man. It must be noticed, too, 
that Paul does not say he received from the Lord the 
command to observe the rite, unless he is using lan- 
guage very loosely, but rather it is the fact that Jesus 
uttered these words which he received. Now of course 
we cannot admit that Paul actually got the information 



320 The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 

in a miraculous way ; a miracle to save the trouble of 
asking some one for himself is least of all conceivable : 
and so we are led to ask if there is not some other 
explanation available, before giving up the natural 
meaning of the words. 

Now if we put together the two facts, that the say- 
ing attributed to Jesus is redolent of Pauline theology 
and extremely difficult to fit in with Jesus' conceptions, 
and that Paul himself apparently tells us that he got 
the saying by direct and supernatural means, we are 
already pointed in the direction we shall have to follow. 
The last paschal meal of Jesus with his disciples, when 
his life was so soon to go out in the tragedy of cruci- 
fixion, must have been a subject of never-failing attrac- 
tiveness for religious meditation. Paul had come to his 
doctrine of the sacrificial nature of Christ's death, and 
now how tempting it would be to find an intimation 
of this in what was almost the last word of Jesus ; 
indeed, if the doctrine was a true one, as Paul had no 
manner of doubt, how could Jesus possibly have 
avoided such a reference. There was to go upon the 
fact that Jesus had taken bread and offered it to his 
disciples, and likewise the wine after supper : what 
were the bread and wine but emblems of the broken 
body and the blood of the new covenant ? And with 
the conviction that such was the fact once firmly 
rooted, the step is not a very long one to the belief that 
Jesus really had made the explanation, particularly if 
we may suppose that a vision sealed it to him. 

Now this hypothesis is not an arbitrary attempt to 
overthrow Paul's testimony, but it is an effort to get 
rid of two real difficulties. Of course there are diffi- 
culties also that can be raised against the hypothesis 
itself; to these however answers can be given. To 



The Last Days of Jesus. 3 2 1 

say that Paul never could have worked himself into 
such a conviction is a very large assumption, when we 
consider how foreign modern caution was to the times 
in which he lived. It is a fault of conservative criti- 
cism, that it argues too much upon what men are 
likely to do when actuated by pure and enlightened 
reason, and refuses to take into account the plain fact 
that men's minds often do not work along these lines, 
but are subject to vagaries of every sort. When dog- 
matic conclusions are held as truth unassailable, then 
facts of history, as might be shown even by modern 
examples, must accommodate themselves to dogmas, 
or it goes hard with them ; and moreover such a 
growth of dogma into history the whole phenomenon 
of the Gospels compels us constantly to assume. It 
also may be objected that the report must inevitably 
have been corrected by the older Apostles. But this 
loses sight of the fact that Paul seldom came in contact 
with the Apostles, who confined themselves pretty 
closely to their own field of work, and. that when he 
did meet them it was to settle some all-absorbing ques- 
tion. Another objection may lie in the supposed im- 
possibility that a rite which did not actually have 
Jesus' sanction back of it should yet have become uni- 
versally adopted by the Church. But Paul's authority 
was certainly sufficient for Gentile Christianity, which 
was the dominant influence in the catholic Church, 
and of the early history of the rite in the primitive 
Apostolic church we have practically no definite knowl- 
edge. Moreover it may be argued that the institution, 
when first it meets us, is by no means what we should 
expect a memorial rite to be. The very name by which 
the meeting went at which it is supposed that it was 
celebrated, and which from Paul's account would 



322 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

seem to be identical with it, the agape, points to a dif- 
ferent origin. It seems to have been a common social 
gathering of the Church, and this characteristic hardly 
could have assumed the prominence it did, so as to 
supply the name of the gathering, if the rite had been 
definitely instituted by Jesus himself for another pur- 
pose. And then again a memorial rite naturally would 
be celebrated once a year, on the anniversary of the 
event it commemorated, or at any rate it would be cele- 
brated at certain definite times. 

Before dropping the matter however it may be 
allowable to hazard one more conjecture. The fact 
that it was the love-feast which grew into the Lord's 
Supper suggests that perhaps after all some special 
character had already been attached to it which made 
the transition a natural and an easy one. Moreover, 
while the discovery of a dogmatic significance in Jesus' 
act, and the conclusion from this that Jesus must have 
seen it and indicated it, is no very violent assumption 
when the premises that governed Paul's reasoning are 
taken into account, yet there is no such obvious 
dogmatic basis for the command, " Do this in remem- 
brance of me ' ' ; and if we could regard this command 
as really issuing from Jesus, the arbitrariness of Paul's 
addition would be very much lessened. What there- 
fore do these words refer to in Paul's account? What 
was it that Jesus commanded to be done ? They cannot 
mean, Repeat this formula, as modern churches do, 
for of this there is not the least hint in the narrative. 
Neither can they very well mean, Celebrate this rite. 
To the disciples the supper simply was the Passover 
meal, and if Jesus had wished to command them to 
celebrate, after his death, which they did not know 



The Last Days of Jes2ts. 323 

was so imminent, another supper, with an entirely dif- 
ferent motive and in an entirely different way, he would 
have needed to go much more into detail than he does. 
Besides this, such a command would have been given 
only once, referring to the rite as a whole, whereas, by 
repeating it in connection both with the bread and the 
wine, Jesus indicates that he means something, not 
including both, but connected with each. And when, 
the second time, he gives the command before the cup 
is passed, he hardly can be guilty of the tautology, 
Drink this wine, as often as ye drink it, or, Celebrate 
this rite, as often as by drinking the wine ye celebrate 
it ; the added clause, " as often as ye drink," makes it 
improbable that the words should be meant as the 
institution of a rite. 

The only other suggestion which occurs to us as 
natural is the very simple suggestion that Jesus just 
means this : Do what I have just now done ; and the 
only thing he is recorded to have done is to have given 
thanks. And this at once would explain the fact that 
the words are repeated both before the bread and wine, 
and most of all it would explain Jesus' words in the 
latter case: "Do this," says Jesus, " as often as ye 
drink." And does it not strike one too as eminently 
natural, and as just what we might expect of Jesus? 
He wishes some simple token to bring him to their 
minds, and what more appropriate than this, whereby 
each day, and constantly throughout the day, the 
grateful recognition of God's mercies should be the 
spell to call up the thought of him who taught them 
to say "Our Father." Easily the recollection of this 
simple memorial might become especially attached to 
those meals where all the band of Christians met in 



324 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

common, just as here Jesus had been seated with his 
disciples ; and then Paul's discovery of the sacramental 
nature of the act would form the transition point 
through which the love-feast came gradually to be the 
solemn rite of the Lord's Supper. 

We shall not attempt to criticise in detail the rest of 
the Gospel narrative. The story undoubtedly has got 
its coloring in a very decided degree from the Old 
Testament, and in some places, as in the account of 
the crucifixion, is taken almost bodily from that source. 
What appears with certainty is that Jesus was arrested 
privately and condemned by the Sanhedrin, and that 
sufficient influence was brought to bear upon the 
procurator to secure his execution, most likely on the 
charge of treason to the Roman power. Probably a 
few other facts may also be established with greater or 
less confidence, but they are not certain enough to 
build very much upon. Already we have before us the 
most that we can hope to know about the external 
aspect of Jesus' life. How that life in its apparent de- 
feat and extinction yet went on to change so mightily 
the course of all human history, belongs to the story 
of the Church. To-day its power is at work more 
mightily than ever before, and in a new and truer way. 
His own disciples never fully understood Jesus, and in 
the Church his features grew so indistinct and unearthly 
that only the greatness of his personality, which once 
perceived, never could be quite forgotten, caused that 
they should not be altogether lost to sight. To-day it 
is our task to dispel the misty clouds of incense about 
his head, which hide while they fain would do him 
honor, and let the world look full upon his face. The 
hope for the Church is that she has set herself to do 



The Last Days of Jesus. 



325 



this task, and already the effects are beginning to ap- 
pear. Every effort to do this, partial though it may 
be, deserves the fullest welcome ; every attempt to 
hinder it must inevitably fail. If one has confidence 
in truth, he cannot fear the issue. 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 

AND so with the death on the cross Jesus' life-work 
closed, and for the moment, with all its magnifi- 
cent promise and heroic struggle, defeat seemed 
all that had come of it at last. How after that short in- 
terval of darkness light began again to break, how the 
idea of Jesus gradually and in the midst of stupidities 
and conventionalities and misunderstandings without 
number finally began to show what power and intense life 
was wrapped up in it, belongs, as we have said, rather 
to the history of the Christian Church. But there is 
one factor in this great result, the belief in Jesus' 
Resurrection, which is bound up so closely with Jesus' 
life that some slight discussion of it can hardly be 
avoided even if it leads just a little out of the way. 
Besides it is a difficult question, as we admit, and we do 
not want to have it appear that we would wish to 
shirk it. When, however, we say that the question is 
not an easy one, we do not mean to have it understood 
that a particularly strong case can be made out for the 
story of Jesus' bodily Resurrection as the Gospels 
understand it. This indeed is far from being true ; 
the evidence for the Resurrection as the Gospels speak 
of it is very weak, weaker upon the whole than the 

326 



The Resurrection of Jesus. 327 

evidence for most of the other miracles in the Gos- 
pels. It is not necessary to dwell again upon the 
inconsistencies of the Gospel stories, but one 
surely cannot help seeing that many inconsist- 
encies there are. According to one account the 
Resurrection took place at the end of the Sabbath, 
according to others on the first day of the week. Jesus 
appears first, now to Mary Magdalene alone, now to a 
number of women, now to Peter. In one Gospel the 
Apostles do not leave Jerusalem, in another the only 
appearance is in Galilee. The farewell words of Jesus 
do not agree. The ascension is now from the Mount 
of Olives, now from a mountain in Galilee. The 
appearances which are found in one Gospel are not 
found in another, and Paul, who professes to give an 
accurate list of them, excludes one half of the appear- 
ances which the Gospels give. Now we do not insist 
so much upon the fact that there are inconsistencies, 
as upon the fact that these inconsistencies should 
occur just here. There is no other part of the Gospels 
where the narratives are so impossible to reconcile, and 
yet this is just the place where we should suppose they 
would have been most exact. It was upon the Resur- 
rection that the Apostles based their preaching, they 
constantly were making their appeal to it ; well, then, 
we ask, why was there not here a definite statement 
of fact upon which tradition could draw ? why do 
the Evangelists here seem to be left entirely to their 
own resources, and their narratives to assume more 
distinctly the appearance of legend ? why do the 
Apostles appeal simply to the fact of the Resurrection 
and not to its special features ? how does it happen 
that it is only in the latest strata of our Gospels, in our 
present Matthew and Luke, that we find the definite 



328 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

features at all, and that even Mark had to stop with the 
appearance of the angels at the tomb ? It may be that 
there are other good reasons for this, but we think by 
far the best reason is, that nothing more was told 
about the Resurrection because, in a word, there was 
nothing to tell, because the appearances were appear- 
ances only, with no external features to them, and 
because it was only when tradition had been given 
time to work that anything more could be told. 

And then, while we are finding difficulties, one must 
we think admit that the Resurrection is peculiarly 
hard to accept, not perhaps because it is a miracle so 
much as because it is unimaginable : that a thing 
is unimaginable is surely, miracle or no miracle, no 
mean argument against it. What, we have to ask, 
was the nature of the body in which Jesus rose ? was 
it still a material body ? this certainly is what we 
should gather from the accounts. It is the same body 
which only a day before was buried, and a miracle by 
which matter has been changed of a sudden into spirit 
is at all events a little startling. And the Evangelists 
scarcely leave us in any doubt about this : Jesus 
speaks with a human voice, he is seen with the eye, he 
eats material food, he can be touched and handled, 
the wounds still are in his hands and side, " a spirit," 
he says, " has not flesh and bones as ye see me have." 
We do not intend to argue against the Resurrection in 
this sense, the raising up of the material body ; those 
who can hold to this belief we have no desire to dis- 
turb. But those who only can look upon the Resur- 
rection as something, not material, but spiritual, we ask 
how they are to reconcile with this the Resurrection of 
Jesus which the Gospels speak of. And we do not 
lose sight of the fact that there are other features 



The Resurrection of Jesus. 329 

which point in a different direction, which seem to 
imply a bod}- which was not material after all. Jesus 
passes through closed doors, he vanishes in an instant, 
he appears in different forms, he ascends into the 
clouds : these things, say the commentators, all show a 
spiritual body. If these qualities went by themselves 
we should have but little to say ; but the fact that they 
are qualities which are superadded to a material body, 
this is what makes the whole thing most inconceivable. 
How are we to think of a body which can be touched 
and still can pass through wood? a body that can 
digest food and yet vanish in a moment ? How can we 
help seeing that here we are in the realm of magic, of 
fairy-land, where contradictions are overlooked, and 
where everything is possible? It is just because the 
doctrine of the Apostles is something very different 
from this that it is not to be rejected without hesitation. 
And that the doctrine of the Apostles was not at all 
like this is proven by the testimony of Paul, the only 
testimony that we have which is beyond suspicion, so 
that upon it our whole conception of the Resurrection 
must depend. In his letter to the Corinthians, he has 
occasion to recall to them the evidence upon which 
their faith is based, and he does this very carefully and 
circumstantially. "For I delivered unto you first of 
all that which also I received, how that Christ died 
for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that he 
was buried ; and that he hath been raised on the third 
day according to the Scriptures ; and that he appeared 
to Cephas ; then to the Twelve ; then he appeared to 
above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the 
greater part remain until now, but some are fallen 
asleep ; then he appeared to James - ; then to all the 
Apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born out of due 



330 The Life and Teachings of yesus. 

time, he appeared tome also." We notice here that 
Paul speaks only of an appearance ; he does not speak 
of long interviews, he does not tell how Jesus walked 
and talked with his disciples and what commands he 
gave them ; he gives no hint of all this. And when 
we remember that Paul is giving here the strongest evi- 
dence that he can of the Resurrection, we say again 
that the only natural reason why he did not give details 
is that there were no details to give, that the appear- 
ances were momentary visions, and nothing more. 
And Paul shows this clearly when he classes his own 
vision with those of the Apostles, and makes no differ- 
ence between them. For in the case of Paul there can 
be no doubt that we have a vision of the glorified 
Christ, not at all any seeing with the bodily eyes ; and 
surely if the other Apostles had seen Jesus on earth as 
an ordinary man, who had walked and talked with 
them, Paul never could have put his experience along 
with theirs, for the two are quite distinct. So that 
without hesitation we say that the fact of the Resur- 
rection was a series of visions, of momentary appear- 
ances of the risen Christ, which were -not visible to the 
bodily eye ; and the only question is whether we can 
explain these appearances in a purely natural way. 

We think that certainly there is much to be said in 
favor of a natural explanation. Jesus had exercised 
such an influence over the minds of his disciples, that 
even his death is not likely wholly to have shaken 
their faith in him, and gradually they would have 
tried to reconcile his death with their earlier con- 
ceptions. And this they actual^ did in some way or 
other succeed in doing ; they found Jesus' sufferings 
in the Scriptures, and with this discovery their confi- 
dence may well have returned in some measure. With 



The Resurrection of fesics. 331 

the thought of Jesus' death as a sacrifice they easily 
could conceive of him as throned in heaven, only wait- 
ing to come again in order to complete his mission. 
And when this point was reached, in a moment of 
excitement, one of the disciples may have had a vision 
of the glorified Jesus ; and then it would have spread to 
others, so that even a number of persons at the same 
time, in highly wrought expectation, might think that 
they had seen it. Now what gives this theory its force 
is the fact that it does correspond to conditions which 
are to be found in the early Christian times. Such 
phenomena as these, visions and ecstasies, we know 
were frequent, and it was believed that they were 
divinely produced. One of the very witnesses to the 
Resurrection, the Apostle Paul, had this power, the 
power of seeing visions, which, in other cases at least, 
we must refer to natural causes. We cannot think of 
the Apostles as cautious and skeptical, ready to weigh 
and to scrutinize the supernatural, as it was just in 
these qualities that they were most signally lacking. 
If we can trust the account in Acts, the beginning of 
the Church was especially marked by these ecstatic 
outbreaks, and we need only recall the gift of tongues, 
a gift that was looked at by every one, even by Paul, as 
divinely produced. That all these phenomena were 
really miraculous we scarcely can believe, because we 
find what is analogous to them in all times of great 
religious excitement ; so that we must hesitate before we 
explain the appearances of Jesus in any different way. 

Nor do we think that the point which has been so 
vigorously pressed, the disappearance of Jesus' body, 
is any objection to this theory ; it only becomes diffi- 
cult when we refuse to see that there are legendary 
elements in the Gospels. We learn from the Gospels 



332 The Life and Teachings of Jesus. 

that after the Sabbath the women found the tomb 
empty, while a vision of angels made known to them 
that Jesus had risen. But the whole of this story is 
decidedly suspicious ; to begin with, there is the vision 
of angels, and this at least cannot be history. And if 
we drop this vision then the whole motive for the story 
is gone ; to say nothing of the fact that the purpose 
which brings the women to the tomb, the anointing of 
a body which already has been buried, is utterly op- 
posed to Jewish custom. And along with this is the fact 
that the disciples, in all likelihood, had fled at once to 
Galilee to escape the fate of their Master. It only is in 
the latest accounts that Jesus appears in Jerusalem, 
and we can see how this would be the tendency of tra- 
dition, to centre everything about the capital. But in 
the older accounts it is in Galilee that Jesus shows him- 
self; the appearance to five hundred disciples which 
Paul speaks of could have taken place in Galilee and in 
Galilee only ; the angels expressly send word through 
the women that he will meet the disciples in Galilee, 
and this loses all of its significance if there was a prior 
meeting in the city. We have no indication either as 
to how long it was before the visions took place, for 
the forty days which Iyiike speaks of clearly has no 
historical value ; and when the visions did take place, 
questions about Jesus' body must have been of infi- 
nitely little importance. It never could have occurred 
to the disciples that the Resurrection needed any such 
proof as this. Doubtless they assumed that the grave 
was empty, but even if we could conceive that they 
should think it necessary to make an examination, yet 
they were in Galilee, and already so long a time may 
have passed since the burial that examination would 
be useless. 



The Resurrection of Jesus. 333 

At the same time we will not deny that after all has 
been said the difficulties in the way of this theory are 
still sufficiently great, and we do not feel that it is to 
be accepted unhesitatingly. In»the first place a con- 
dition of mind which could produce a vision is not 
likely to have arisen at once after Jesus' death. True, 
the despondency of the disciples has we think often 
been much exaggerated. If Jesus had prepared the 
disciples for his death, as it seems probable that he had 
done, and if in words which they still remembered he 
had assumed that they were to carry on his work, then 
they could not have been utterly cast down when the 
crisis came ; and the fact that as many as five hundred 
of them still recognized themselves as Jesus' disciples, 
and could on occasion be gathered together, is proof 
that this was not so. But still the shock must have 
been a severe one, and they could not all at once have 
recovered from it ; they had now to go to work under 
conditions which certainly tended to sober their imag- 
inations, and we do not see that there was much in 
their situation to call forth these extravagances. 
Now we do not know how long it was before the 
visions appeared, and yet we hardly can allow a very 
great interval of time. The Apostles placed the Resur- 
rection on the third day, and this is not difficult to 
account for ; as Paul says, it was ' ' according to the 
Scriptures." But while this does not fix the time of 
Christ's appearing, yet it is natural to think that this 
bore some reasonable relation to the time which the 
Apostles fixed upon for the Resurrection, and it agrees 
with this that Paul separates his own vision sharply 
from those of the other Apostles, and implies that there 
was a long interval of time between them. 

Moreover we do not think it is altogether in favor of 



334 The Life and Teachings of fesus. 

the vision theory that it is in general only to the Apos- 
tles that the visions come ; on the whole we think that 
naturally these would have been the last to be affected 
by the delusion, and* that it would have been more 
likely to appear among the less distinguished followers 
of Jesus. The Apostles were men who especially had 
been picked out by Jesus, and for some time they had 
been living under his direct influence, an influence 
that was eminently sane and heathful ; moreover the 
work which they afterwards accomplished shows that 
Jesus had not been altogether mistaken in them. But 
to think that just these men, not one or two of them 
alone, but all of them together, should twice have been 
deceived by a heated imagination into the belief that 
Jesus had appeared to them, is not without its diffi- 
culty. And we also should take into account the cer- 
tainty which they felt that this appearance was real, 
and the immense consequences which resulted from the 
conviction. And most of all is it difficult to explain 
the limited number of the appearances ; the course of 
events seems to have been just what in the case of a 
religious excitement we should not have expected it to 
be, and the whole thing suddenly stops when it has 
reached its greatest intensity. How such a delusion 
might spring up it is easy to explain ; but when it 
once had got under way its whole tendency would be 
to spread, to assume wider and wider proportions. 
Here we have all the conditions, we have five hundred 
people so wrought upon that they fancy they have seen 
a vision ; and yet so far as Paul seems able to tell, this 
appearance, outside the Apostolic circle, is the first and 
the last one. 

If one thinks that these arguments are not to be set 
aside, there still is left open to him the possibility of a 



The Resurrection of Jesus. 335 

real influence of Jesus upon his disciples, a revelation 
of his continued existence, though a revelation purely 
psychical. We cannot at present deny the possibility 
of such an influence ; the evidence which in other 
cases points to its possibility is certainly extremely 
dubious, and yet even there it is not absolutely without 
force. So long as any other explanation is sufficient 
we cannot resort to this ; for our part however we are 
not ready to insist that other explanations are entirely 
sufficient. Of one thing only we can be sure, that the 
faith which the disciples needed for their task came to 
them ; and if we find God at all in history, least of all 
we shall refuse to find him here. Only it is not upon 
this that we can rest our own faith, if we would rest it 
securely ; it is after all only an objective fact, a fact of 
history, and such a fact always will be open to the 
possibility of doubt. Jesus for men to-day has brought 
life and immortality to light, but it is because he has 
revealed to us the real meaning of life, and has shown 
us that in its very nature it is divine and eternal. 



APPENDIX. 

AN ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT THE COMMON SOURCE 
USED BY THE WRITERS OF THE THREE GOSPELS. 

I. Matt. 3 : 1-12 (omitting v. 4). 



1. The account of John is shown to have been in the source 
by the evident relation between Matt, and Luke. Just how it 
originally opened it is difficult to say. Mk.'s opening sentence 
appears from the word £vayysA.iov to be due to himself. The 
word EvayyeXiov is used by Mk. only in a technical and theo- 
logical sense (Mk. 1:15, in connection with belief; 8:35; 
10 : 29 ; 13 : 10 ; 14 : 9), and is so used nowhere else in the 
Synoptics, except where it is taken from Mk. (Matt. 26 : 13). 
In the source it probably was used once in the sense of "glad 
tidings " (Matt. 4 : 23, cf. 9 : 35). Ti]S 'iovdaiaS may be an 

Note. In the following pages I have presupposed the work 
of Professor Weiss, to whom I hardly need to acknowledge my 
indebtedness. I am convinced that he has discovered the truth 
about the Gospel relations so far as his general theory goes. 
Barring points of detail, I differ from him only in the belief 
that Mark made a far greater use of the source than he would 
allow. When this is granted I think that a great many things 
will be explained, which cannot be explained otherwise ; in fact I 
believe that there is no phenomenon in the Gospel which will not 
find a natural explanation. Especially I call attention to the 
way in which the sayings of Jesus are disposed of in the follow- 
ing pages, a good test of the theory. I have made no attempt to 
restore the order of the source except in isolated cases, and do 

not think that such a restoration is possible. 
22 

337 



33& Appendix. 



2. Mk. i : 9-1 1. 

3. Matt. 4 : i-ii. 

4. Matt. 4 : 23-5 : 2. 



addition by Matt. The phrase juerav<<£irE, r/yyiHEv yap i) 
fia.6ike.ia tgdv ovpardbv, is better attributed to John, than, 
as in Mk. (1 : 15) to Jesus ; for John's was more particularly a 
preaching of repentance and of preparation. The picturesque 
description of John (v. 4) is probably due to Mk. Matt, brings 
it in here because Mk.'s order is no longer natural when the 
verses which Mk. omits are retained (Matt. 3 :$ff.). e H itEpi- 
XcopoS rov 'Iopddvov, omitted by Mk. is shown to have been 
in the source by its presence in Luke (3 : 3). The reference to 
the Pharisees and Sadducees is apparently due to the first Evan- 
gelist. Mk. adds the prophecy from Malachi. He changes the 
direct address to /3a7tridjua fisravoiaS sis aq>E6iv djuapricSv, 
in which he is followed by Luke. He omits most of John's 
words, changes the order of the clauses which he does give, 
probably changes rd virodjjjuara fiadrddai to uvtyaS \v6ai 
rov ijudvra tgov vnoS^/udroov avrov, and omits nal 7tvpi, 
the special motive for which disappears with the omission of 
Matt. 3 : 10. 

2. As the question of John and the answer of Jesus are 
unknown to the other Evangelists, the incident is probably 
added by Matt, as an attempt to account for the fact of the 
baptism. The agreement of Matt, and Luke shows that dvoiyoo 
was used in the source, instead of Mk.'s dx%&>- 

3. 'Ayiav itokiv for 'lEpo66\vjj,a is probably due to Matt. 
Mk., followed by Luke, makes the temptation continue 
through the forty days, but loses the motive for this statement 
of time by his omission of the hunger and consequent temp- 
tation. 

4. Seep. 61. Matt, follows Mk. (4 : 17-22), and then goes back 
to follow the source. Perhaps this section opened, as in Mk., 
by a reference to John's imprisonment. Luke condenses the 
introduction to the source (4 : 14-15), and then opens his account 
of the ministry with a narrative of his own. He then takes 
up Mk., only omitting the call of the disciples, which he brings 
in in a different form at the close of Mk.'s account of the first 



Appendix. 339 



5. Luke 6:20b, 21; Matt. 5:11-12, 14-48 (omitting vv. 
25, 26, 31, 32); 6: 1-6, 16-18; 7: 1-5, 12; Luke 6:43-45; 
Matt. 7:21, 24-29. 

6. Matt. 8 : 1-4. 



day. It seems better to retain Matt.'s phrase rj fiadiheia tgov 
ovparoov, rather than Mk.'s rov Qsov. See p. 218. Once how- 
ever rov Oeov occurs in the source (Matt. 12 128, cf. hv itvEvfxari 
Beov\ and Mk. may have got his phrase here. 

5. Luke's woes are probably due to his own point of view 
on the question of wealth, and it might be that, for the same 
reason, he has, in the beatitudes, changed what originally was 
spiritualized. I take the opposite view however. See p. 211. For 
the sermon as a whole see p. 211/ For Matt. 5 : 25, 26, see 33. 

For Matt. 5 : 31-32, see 45. It is inappropriate here, as Jesus 
is laying down principles and not rules. Luke omits the early 
part of the sermon as having too special a reference to Jewish 
customs. He begins abruptly with the formula, aXAd vjuiv 
Xeyao ro?? ockovov6iv (cf. Matt.'s yxovdars), and mixes up the 
sayings about retaliation and love to enemies. He then omits 
Matt. 6 : 1-6, 16-18, for the same reason as above. Matt, gathers 
together various passages on prayer. For 6 : 9-13, see 25 ; 
6 : 14-15, see 42. Matt. 6 : 7-8 is probably due to oral tradition. 
Another long insertion occurs Matt. 6 : 19-34. For vv. 19-21, 
25-33, see 3°> ( v - 34 i s probably a current proverb added by 
Matt.); vv. 22-23, see 27 : v. 24, see 41. Luke paraphrases 
the sayings about the mote and beam very freely, and inserts 
two sayings (6 : 39-40) for which see 19 and 29. For Matt. 7 : 7-1 1, 
see 25 ; 7 : 13-14, 21-23 ; 8 : 11-12, see 35. Matt. 7 : 19 is taken 
from the words of John (Matt. 3 : 10). Matt. 7 : 6 is probably 
due to oral tradition. Perhaps 7 : 15b is a popular proverb. 
6 dyaQoS av f Jpao7toi . . . rd drdjua avrov is inverted by 
Matt., and put in another connection (12 : 35). 

6. The presence of this narrative in the source is indicated 
by the fact that Matt, brings it in immediately after the Sermon 
(probably its original position), instead of following Mark ; 
and also by slight points of contact between Matt, and Luke. 
See idov, Kvpis, and the omission of Mk.'s picturesque 
touches 6it\ayxvi6 ( iEi^ and £ju{3piju7j6d/j.evoi avr<&. 



34-G Appendix. 



7> 


Matt. 8:5-13 (omitting vv. 11, 12). 


8. 


Matt. 9: 18-26. 


9- 


Matt. 11 : 2-19 (omitting w. 14, 15), 


10. 


Matt. 11 : 20-24. 


11. 


Matt. 11 : 25-30. 


12. 


Luke 10: 23-24. 



7. Luke also places this after the Sermon, but alters it very 
materially. Matt, now takes up Mark again for a few verses 
(8 : 14-16), losing of course the connection of this passage with 
Mk. 1 : 16-28. 

8. As Luke follows the account of the centurion's son with 
the raising of the widow's son at Nain, this may have been the 
original position of the raising of the dead which was in the 
source. Luke has one point of contact with Matt, in the use 
of Kpa67te8ov. The narrative Matt. 9:27-31, is probably a 
combination by Matthew of the stories of blind Bartimaeus, 
and of the blind man in the eighth chapter of Mark. The 
use of the epithet vie daveid, here without any connection 
with the rest of the narrative, is in Mark met by a protest from 
the people, and seems to be connected with Mark's view of 
Jesus' Messiahship. In Matthew the 7tpo6?JXQav avrcp oi rvcpXoi 
(cf. Mk.'s r/XBsv rcpoi rov Y^tf ovv) comes in abruptly and with- 
out explanation. Jesus is made to disregard the entreaties of 
*he man and to let them follow without notice, till he comes to 
the house. Why should he do this if he meant to heal them ? 
The touching of the eyes, on the other hand, and the command 
to tell no one, without however the preliminary precautions 
which would make this prohibition of any use, come from the 
story in the eighth chapter. This would explain the presence 
of two blind men in the story, a number which Matthew retains 
when he comes to the story of Bartimaeus. Matthew makes 
this combination simply to get a story for his list of miracles. 
Cf. his mutilation of another narrative in the following section 

(9^2-34). 

9. As Luke brings in here the discourse about John, we may 
perhaps assume that this was the original position. Matt, in- 
troduces vv. 14, 15 from Mk. 9 : 13. 

12. I put this here on the authority of Luke. Matthew has 



Appendix. 341 



13. Matt. 13 : 3-9 ; Mk. 4 : 26-29 \ Matt. 13 : 31-33, 44-46 
51-52. 

14. Matt. 8 : 19-22. 

15. Matt. 8 : 23-27. 

16. Matt. 8:28-34. 

17. Matt. 9 : 1-8. 

18. Matt. 14 : 13-21. 

19. Matt. 15 : 1-14. 



interwoven it into the parable discourse (13 : 16-17), but this 
can hardly be its place, for it makes the verb refer in the first 
sentence to spiritual, and in the second to physical vision. 

13. See p. 203. This section, which seems in the source to 
have been a parable discourse, is somewhat difficult to restore 
with certainty. I have given the introductory remarks about 
the crowd to Mark, because this is a favorite touch of his, and 
because the question attached to the last parable, 6vrrfKarE 
ravra itavra, appears to suggest that the parables were spoken 
to the disciples. 

15. I put this incident in because of its somewhat simpler 
form in Matt., and because it is so closely connected with the 
next following one. 

17. Luke agrees with Matt, in xXivrj, v. 18, and q>6fiov, 
v. 26. 

18. The connection of this with the return of the Twelve, 
and the notice of the crowds which prevented them from tak- 
ing rest, are probably due to Mk. Luke has a few points of 
contact with Matt. Karz rotis Xft e ^ av £X ovra< = ^£pcc7teiai idro, 
v. 11 ; the disciples' answer, given as in Matt., with a para- 
phrase of Mk.'s addition thrown in afterwards, v. 13; ro 
it£pi66Ev6av KXa6fj.0i.TG0v xocpiroi Soddexa, v. 17. The story 
of the walking on the sea contains no clear indication, but in 
my opinion is due to Mark. If this was not present in the 
source, it would help to explain why Luke omits it. 

19. This appears to have been in the source (1) from the 
saying about blind guides, which Luke also has retained in an 
impossible connection (6 : 39), and (2) from the apparently 
more original character of Matt. Thus Mk. on account of an 
addition which he makes, repeats the reason of the Pharisees' 



34 2 Appendix. 



20. Matt. 15 : 21-22, 26-28. 

21. Matt. 16: 13-20. 

22. Matt. 17: 1-9. 

23. Matt. 17: 14-18. 

24. Matt. 9 : 36-38 ; Kaz 7tpo6xaXs6djusvoi rov juaOf/rdS 
avrov £7Ce6teiXsv avrovi nal 7CaprjyyeiA.ev avrotS Xeyoov ; 
Matt. 10:50-16; Luke 10:16. 

attack a second time (7 : 2, 5) ; the order of Jesus' answer, the 
ground of the denunciation preceding the denunciation itself, 
seems more natural in Matt. In changing this order Mk. has 
to insert a uai s'Xsyev avroiS, and to repeat a sentence twice 
(7 : 8, 9). Mk. has secondary touches not present in Matt. 
Notice HaXooS in v. 9, apparently suggested by the much more 
natural KaXcoS, v. 6 ; the awkwardness of the two relative 
clauses in v. 11 ; the statement ovksti dcpv.rz avrov ovdev 
itoiij6ai. Mk. introduces explanatory notes for gentile readers, 
vv. 3, 11. I attribute to him the interpretation of the parable, 
principally because the other interpretation which he gives 
seems certainly to belong to him, and because the style of the 
interpretation, especially the list of sins, savors more of a 
Pauline disciple than of Jesus. 

20. See p. 168. To Mk. is probably due the notice of Jesus' 
inability to remain unknown, the words a<peS itpoorov 
Xopra6Brjvai rd rsnva, and the more definite description of 
the result of Jesus' promise, v. 30. 

21. The presence of rov 6sov in Luke, makes probable 
Matt.'s reading in v. 16. On account of the parallelism I have 
retained rov viov rov dvBpooitov {cf. o vid$ rov Beov) in v. 13. 
The following section is probably due entirely to Mk. Notice 
the different use of kitirifiav in v. 30, and w. 32, 33 ; see p. 236. 

22. The discourse about Elias is omitted by Luke, and is 
probably due to Mk. 

23. See p. 177. Matt, has added a saying from the source. 
See 42. 

24. Seep. 224. Mk.'s report of this discourse is evidently 
an abstract of the longer version. Matt, follows him in 10 : 1. 
As between Matt, and Luke, Matt, as usual for the most part 
keeps closer to the original. The words /ir/ds dvo x trc ^ va< = 
jur/de L7io8?}[iara jurfSe pdfidov, are also probably an addition 



Appendix. 343 



25. Luke 11: 1 (omitting first clause); Matt. 6: 9-13; Luke 
11 : 5-8; Matt. 7: 7-1 1. 

26. Matt. 12:22-32. 

27. Matt. 12:38-39; Luke 11:30; Matt. 12:41-45 (omit- 
ting the last sentence) ; Matt. 6 : 22-23. 

28. Matt. 23 : 13-28 ; 4 : 29-32, 34-39- 

from Mk. They obscure the meaning, for the cc&oS yap 6 
epyarrj'i rrjS rpcxprjS avrov can refer only to the taking of 
bread and money. Moreover the long string of objects makes 
the sentence clumsy. Mk. adds these picturesque details, and 
pictures the disciples as going out with only a staff of all the 
traveller's ordinary equipment, an idea not quite correspond- 
ing with the prohibition of scrip and money in the source, but 
still harmless enough. Matt., perhaps without looking at the 
passage very carefully, remembered that a staff had been men- 
tioned, and included it also in the prohibition. Luke's version 
is at times hardly more than a paraphrase. The opening sec- 
tion he omits, probably by reason of its reference to the Samari- 
tans and Gentiles, but portions of it he brings in later (v. 9). 
To obviate the clumsiness which results from this omission, 
he anticipates the simile of the sheep and wolves. V. 12 was 
probably taken originally from the woes against the Galilean 
cities, and accordingly Luke takes this occasion to bring in 
that discourse. Matt, as usual brings together a number of 
sayings from the source. Vv. 17-22, see 29 and Mk. 13 : 9-13 ; 
vv. 24-33, see 29 ; vv. 34-36, see 32 ; vv. 37-39, see 39. For v. 42, 
cf. Mk. 9 : 41. V. 41 may be due to tradition. For Luke 10 : 
17-20, see p. 164. 

26. Matt, adds rv cpXov. This probably was not in the origi- 
nal account, as Luke omits it, and Matt, himself says, "the 
dumb man both spake and saw," whereas we naturally should 
have expected "the blind and dumb man," or else "the blind 
man," as that was the worse affliction. The last two verses 
seem to be modified somewhat in phraseology by tradition. 
Matt., because of the reference to blasphemy, adds verses taken 
for the most part from the Sermon on the Mount (vv. 33-35). 

27. See p. 199. 

28. This discourse is difficult to restore. For introduction 
see p. 250. V. 4 I place after v. 28, on the authority of Luke. V. 



344 Appendix. 



29. Luke 12 : 1 (to 7tpwrov) ; Matt, 10 : 26-33, 19-20, 24-25. 

30. Luke 12 : 13-20 ; Matt. 6 : 25-33, 19-21. 

31. Matt. 25 : 1-12 ; 24 : 42-51. 

Z2. Luke 12 : 49-50 ; Matt. 10 : 34-36. 

33. Luke 12 : 54-59. 

34. Luke 13 : 1-9. 



33 is due to Matt., as is shown by yewy/iara sxiSvgov, bor- 
rowed from the words of John. If this arrangement be ap- 
proximately correct, Luke's version maybe tolerably accounted 
for. On account of his mistaken interpretation of its occasion, 
he puts the saying about the cup and platter first. Then the 
other sections follow in the same relative order as in the source, 
only with several omitted because of their reference to matters 
specifically Jewish. Finally, what originally was the opening 
paragraph, displaced by the saying about the cup and platter, 
is thrown in at the end. For 77 6o<picc tov Qeov see p. 306. 
Luke is often manifestly secondary. See 11 141 ; 47-48, where 
the whole point is missed ; 49, nal ££ avrdov, where a statement 
as to what happened to others, as in Matt., is obviously wanted ; 
49, aito6ToXoVi. viov Bocpaxiov is probably due to Matt. 

29. The saying about leaven is introduced by Luke (notice 
rtpooTov) simply to use it up (as is also v. 10). By making the 
next sentence refer back to vTc6npi6iv , an entirely wrong sense 
is given to it. Notice Luke's eiTtave, transferred to the rela- 
tive clause, and so obscuring the thought (cf. Matt.). With 
this saying removed, a fairly good meaning is obtained for the 
introductory remark. It is the sight of the crowds which re- 
minds Jesus of the future, when the true knowledge of the 
kingdom will be given to the world, and not simply to a little 
company. For the remainder see p. 280/. 

30. Luke 12 : 13-20 I assign to the source because it seems to 
be authentic, and because it would account for the Sid rovro 
(Matt. 6:25). 

31. See p. 283/". In addition cf. the knocking of the master 
with the knocking of the belated virgins. Luke 12 : 47-48 is 
most likely due to the Evangelist, for 6 fipvyfioS tgdv oSovtgdv 
naturally brings the section to an end. 

34. Cf. the use of the parable by Mk. in the story of the 
barren fig-tree. 



Appendix. 345 



35. Matt. 7 : 13-14 ; 22 a ; Luke 13 : 26-27 J Matt. 8 : 1 1-12. 

36. Matt. 12 : 1-13 (omitting vv. 5-7, 12). 

37. Luke 14 18-14. 

38. Luke 14 : 16-24. 

39. Luke 14 : 26 (omitting eti . . . tavrov\ 27; Mk. 
8 : 35 (omitting nal rov EvayyeXiov); Luke 14 : 28-35. 

40. Luke 15:1-2; Mk. 2:17; Matt. 18:12-13; Luke 
15 : 8-10 (altered to correspond to preceding) ; Matt. 
21 : 28-32. 

41. Luke 16: 1-13. 

42. Luke 17: 1-6; Mk. 11 : 24 ; Matt. 18:21-34 ; 6 : 14-15. 

35. Luke's introduction is suspicious, and perhaps suggested 
by the bXiyoz eidiv oi evpidKovreS avrrjv. Luke correctly 
makes the passage refer to Jewish contemporaries. Luke, in 
paraphrasing the passage freely, has introduced features from 
the parable of the virgins : a.nokX.Ei6y rrjv Qvpav ; uvpiE, 
avoiqov rjfxiv ; otHodEdTtorrjS. His representation is shown to 
be secondary because (1) the figure of the oiuo8E6Tt6vr/i has 
nothing in the context to suggest or explain it, and is inconsist- 
ent with v. 26^ V. 26 especially, shows that Jesus is speaking 
of himself, as he does in Matt.'s account ; (2) the first reply of 
the master, ovk oida v/xdS 7tdSev edrs, is simply an anticipa- 
tion of the second, and so must be dropped out. This makes 
necessary a reconstruction of the whole. 

36. See p. 238. 

37. The saying 7ta<i 6 vtpcov . . . vrpGoBrfdsrai, which 
was certainly in the source, gets its best connection here. 

38. See p. 204. 

39. The verse oS d'av QeXp . . . 6go6ei avrr/v probably 
belongs here, as Matt, and Mk. both give it in this context, and 
Luke's ETi te nal rr/v ipvxw savrov seems to be a reminiscence 
of it. 

40. See p. 300. For displacement of the parable of the two 
sons by the parable of the prodigal son, cf. ri Se vjuir Sokei, 
Matt. 21 : 28 and 18 : 12. For the conclusion see Luke 7 : 29-30. 

41. V. 13 probably belongs here. Luke's version may in parts 
be a free one. 

42. Luke more probably has the original form of the saying 
about prevailing faith. When it became connected with the 



346 Appendix. 



43. Luke 17 : 20-27 (omitting v. 25) ; Matt. 24 : 40-41 ; Luke 

I7:37- 

44. Mk. 2 : 18; Matt. 9: 15-17. 

45. Mk. 10 : 2-10 ; Luke 16 : 18 ; Matt. 19 : 10-12. 

46. Mk. 10: 13-16. 

47. Mk. 10 : 17-27 ; Luke 18 : 28-30. 

48. Matt. 20 : 1-16. 

49. Mk. 10 : 35-37 ; Matt. 20 : 22-27 J Luke 22 : 27-30. 

50. Matt. 21:1; Mk. 11:2-3; 7-8; Matt. 21:9; Luke 
19:39-40,45-46; 21:37-38. 

51. Matt. 21 : 23-27. 

52. Matt. 21 : 33-44 (omitting 43). 

story of the barren fig-tree, the sycamore "was changed to a 
mountain. The verse Mk. 11: 24 is probably corrupt in both 
Matt.'s and Mk.'s version. For the conclusion, the form of 
Matt. 6 : 14-15 seems most original. 

43. See p. 292. 

44. Luke shows a slight connection with Matt, in kxxv- 
6r?6erai(5 137). 

45. The saying 7taS 6 ditoXvoov . . . poixsvei is present 
in Luke, and agrees with Matt, in the last clause (Matt. 5 132), 
and in having a participial instead of a relative construction. 
ixi) hiti itopvziq. seems to be due to Matt. In general Mk. has 
retained the original form. 

47. Probably in the source. See rprf/natoS ; omission of MV 
<x7Zo6Tepi)(jyS and rjya7trj6Ev avrov ; 7toXXaitXa6iova, and in 
general the concluding verses. For Matt. 19 : 28 see 49. 

49. Matt, has 77 urjrrjp roov vioov ZefieSaiov, perhaps to save 
the credit of the Apo?tles. But in Jesus' answer the plu. is re- 
tained, o aireidSs. Notice that the ri BeXsis does not come in 
naturally after Matt.'s airov6a rz, an indication that his text is 
secondary. 

50. Mk. 11 : 5-6 is omitted by Matt., and it strikes me as one 
of Mk.'s additions. Similarly Mk. 11 : 15 b, 16. The omission 
by Matt, of dyopdt,ovrai at any rate seems an improvement. 

51. Luke has slight points of agreement with Matt, (diddd- 
xorroS, nayoo). 

52. Luke 20 : 15a agrees with Matt., and both add itdi 6 
ne6oov , . , XiHjurjdei avrov (at least in WH. text). 



Appendix. 347 



53. 


Matt. 22 : 15-22. 


54. 


Matt. 22 : 23-33. 


55. 


Matt. 22 : 35-40. 


56. 


Mk. 12 : 35-37. 


57- 


Mk. 13. 


58. 


Matt. 25 : 14-29. 


59- 


Matt. 25 : 31-46. 



The historical notice in Matt. 21 : 45, 46, follows Mk., but 
is influenced by Matt. 21 : 26. 

53. Just what historical setting this series of narratives had, 
or whether they belong together at all, it is not easy to say. 
Matt, and Luke agree in having itovrjpiav {Ttavovpyiav) for 
Mk.'s V7toHpi6iv. Moreover, the first 8idoi6xEi4 in Luke may 
be an echo of a version like Matt.'s. Mk. seems to be less 
original in v. 14 (last clause), v. 15^, 16a. 

54. Matt, seems slightly more original than Mk. in 22 : 25, 
26; 29, 7tXava6Be on; 30, ev r^f dva6rddei ; omission of 
7toA.v 7t\ava6Qe, and perhaps elsewhere. 

55. Matt, is shown to be original by the fact that Luke has 
made use of the narrative in the parable of the good Samaritan, 
and has retained vo^ino<i y TtEipa^Gov, and didddnaXs. 

56. The actual question and answer in Matt, may be due to 
the itt£>% Xeyov6ir oi ypa/ujuarsiS. 

57. Matt, adds nccl dvvreXeias rov od6ovo$, v. 3 ; perhaps 
/ur/de dafifiarcp, v. 20. Matt. 24 : 9-14, is a free paraphrase, due 
to the fact that this passage already has been used by Matt. 
(10: 17-22). In v. 22, Matt, has noXo(icobr}6ovrai ai r/juepai 
kuelvai, and this may be a reminiscence of the original form. 
In this case Mk. must have changed the form of the whole 
sentence from a standpoint after the event, and in the first 
clause have been followed by Matt. It seems more likely, 
however, that Mk.'s form is original. evBsoo<=,{v. 29), however, 
seems to be a survival from the source. Luke is very free, 
and reveals a standpoint to which the fall of Jerusalem is 
past. He is much more definite in his predictions (vv. 20, 
24), and he separates the catastrophe from the parousia, placing 
between them the xaipoi eBvgdv, of indefinite extent. 

58. Matt. 25 : 30, is very likely an addition, modelled after 
similar endings. 



348 Appendix. 



60. Luke 22: 1, 2 (introduce sv doAcp xparjjdavres) ; Mk. 
14:10, 11a; Matt. 26:i6-i8a (to XeyEi); Mk. 14:14-15 
(from mov); Matt. 26 : 19. 

61. Matt. 26 : 20, 26-30 (omitting si$ dcpE6iv dfiapricov). 

62. Matt. 26 : 31-35 (omitting v. 32). 

63. Matt. 26 -.36, 39-41 a (omitting rdp Ilsrpcp). 

64. Matt. 26 : 47-52, 56 b. 

65. Matt. 26:57-59; Mk. 14:56, 60-62 (through eijui); 
Luke 22: 69; Mk. 14:63-65 (insert rz's e6tiv 6 Ttai6ai 6e); 
66-72 (omit eh devrs'pov, and substitute ndi e^eXBgdv e%go 
EHXavdsv Ttinpooi). 



60. Some section of this sort is necessary as a connecting 
link, and the simpler form in Matt, (without the suggestion of 
a miracle), seems original. See also Evnaipiav in Matt, and 
Luke. The opening verse I take from Luke, because it seems 
a trifle more natural, and because it suits better the and tote 
of Matt, (though of course this may itself be secondary). Matt. 
26 : 2, 18b, I take as a free reproduction of the sense. The 
original form seems to be in Mk. 

61. The prophecy of the betrayal may possibly belong here. 
Notice, however, that Luke displaces it, and throws it in later, 
which he would have been less likely to do if he had had both 
Mk. and the source against him. 

62. V. 32 has a poor connection, and seems to be due to Mk. 

63. Luke's account is much the shorter, and it seems rather 
less likely that he should abbreviate it, than that Mk., as he 
often does, should enlarge upon it. Moreover, the leaving 
behind of the disciples in two sections, looks a little artificial, 
especially as all the disciples appear to be present when Judas 
arrives, although Jesus had not returned to the larger body of 
them. Notice also, that Matt, has the plu. i6xvdar£, though he 
follows Mk. in making the words addressed to Peter only. 

64. This is only a guess. Matt, and Luke agree in putting 
two sayings in Jesus' mouth, but the sayings differ. The inci- 
dent of the sword seems in Mk. to be a little too parenthetical, 
and to need something to complete it. 

65. Mk. 14 : 57-59, gives me the impression of being an 
insertion. It, moreover, is omitted by Luke. Hard zov Oeov 



Appendix. 349 



66. Mk. 15 : 1-41. 

67. Matt. 27 : 57-60. 

68. Matt. 28: 1 (omitting first clause); Mk. 16 '.4-5; Matt. 
28 : 5-7. 



rov Ca?vroS, in Matt., seems to be a reminiscence of Matt. 
16 : 16. 

66. In the lack of positive data, I do not venture to restore 
this section, but, in all likelihood, Mk. has amplified it more or 
less. 

68. The incident of the preparation of the spices, I refer, 
with some hesitation, to Mk., cf. 60. The xaQcds EiitEv is 
assigned both by Matt, and Luke to the resurrection, and not, 
as by Mk., to the meeting in Galilee, cf. 62. 

Sections of the Gospel Narrative due to the writer of our 
First Gospel. 

Matt. 1 ; 2 ; 3 : 14-15 ; 4 : 13-16 ; 5:5,7-9; 6 : 7, 8, 34 b ; 7:6; 
8 : 17 ; 9 : 13 a ; 10 : 41 ; 12 : 5-7, 17-21 ; 13 : 35-43, 47-50 ; 14 : 28-31 ; 
15 : 23-25 ; 17 : 24-27 ; 18 : 10, 15-17, 19-20; 21 .4, 5, 10, 11, 14-16; 
23 : 2-3, 8-10, 33 ; 26 : 15, 25, 53 (?) ; 27 : 3-10, 19, 24-25, 51 b-53, 
62-66 ; 28 : 2-4, 9-20. 

Sections of the Gospel Narrative due to the writer of our 
Second Gospel. 

Mk. 1:6, 16-39, 45; 2:2, 4, 13-15, 27; 3^3-4,6,9-21,31-35; 
4:1, 10-20, 33-34; 5:3-6, 8-9, 18-20, 30-32, 35-37, 43; 6:1-6, 
13-33, 45-56 ; 7:3-4, 17-23, 31-37 ; 8 : 1-26, 31-33 ; 9 : 11-18, 20-26, 
28-41; 10:1, 32-34, 46-52; 11:12-14, 20-22; 12:32-34, 38-44; 
14:2-9, 13-14, 17-21, 33-34, 39-42, 48-49, 51-52. 

Sections of the Gospel Narrative due to the writer of our 
Third Gospel. 

Luke 1; 2; 3:1-2, 10-15, 23-28; 4:16-30; 5:1-9; 7 : «-l7> 
36-50 ; 8:1-3; 9 : 61-62 ; 10 : 17-20, 25-42 ; 11 : 27-28 ; 13 : 10-17, 
31-33; 15:11-32; 16:19-31; 17:7-19; 18:1-14; 19:1-10,41-44; 
22 : 31-38 ; 23 : 6-12, 27-31, 39-43 ; 24 : 13-53. 



350 



Appendix. 



Cases in which Mark has borrowed phrases or incidents from 
the Common Source, and has used them apart from their origi- 
nal connection. 

Mk. i : 15, cf. Matt. 3:2; 1 : 21, cf. 4 : 23 ; 1 : 22, cf. 7 : 28-29 \ 
1 : 24, cf. 8 : 29 ; 1 : 28, cf 4 : 24 ; 1 : 32, 34, cf. 4 : 24 ; 1 : 45, and 
similar passages, cf. Luke 12 : 1 ; 2 : 15-16, cf. Luke 15 : 1-2 ; 
3 : 4, </. Matt. 12:12; 3 : 7-8, cf 4 : 25 ; 3:13, cf 5:1; 3 : 14-15, 
cf. 10 : 7-8 ; 3 : 21, 22, cf. 12 : 22-24 ; 4:21, cf 5 : 15; 4: 22, cf 
10 : 26 ; 4 : 24, cf. 7:2; 4 : 25, cf. 25 : 29 ; 6 : 6 b, cf. 4 : 23 ; 6 : 7 b, 
13, cf. 10:8; 6:12, ^/! 10:7; 6:14-16, cf. 16:14; 6:34, cf. 
9:36 (?); 6:56, cf. 9:21; 8:11-12, cf 12:38; 8:33, 4/". 4:10; 
8 : 34, 35, cf 10 : 38-39 ; 8 : 38, cf. 10 : 33 ; 9 : 1, ^". 24 : 34 ; 9 : 23, 
£/". Luke 17 : 6 ; 9 : 33-35, ^ Matt. 24 : 26 ; 9 : 37, cf. Luke 10: 16 
and Matt. 10 : 40 ; 9 : 40, £/". Matt. 12 : 30 ; 9:42, cf. Luke 17:2; 
9:45-48, cf. Matt. 5:29-30; 9:50, £/". Luke 14:34-35; 10:31, 
cf. Matt. 20 : 16 ; 10 : 38 b, cf. Luke 12 : 50 ; 11 : 12 jf. cf. Luke 
13 : 6ff. ; 11 : 22-23, cf Luke 17 : 5-6 ; 11 : 24-25, cf. Matt. 18 : 19, 
21 jf.\ 12:38, </. Matt. 23; 14:21, cf. Luke 17:2; 14:28,^. 
Matt. 28 : 7. 





INDEX TO PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS. 



MATTHEW. 

PAGE 

i.-ii 32 

iii. 1-12 50 

iii. 13-17 195 

iv. 13 299 

iv. 23-v. 1 62 

v.-vii 211, 251 

v. 11-12 280 

v. 29 269 

v. 38-48 273 

v. 43 207 

vi. 22-23 200 

vi. 25-33 263 

vii. 22-23 J 6i 

vii. 28-29 63 

viii. 5-13 169 

viii. 14-17 47 

viii. 21-22 270 

viii. 28-34 56 

ix. 1-8 56, 167 

ix. 10 45 

ix. 14 42 

ix. 14-17 257, 279 

ix. 18-26 57, 170 

ix. 27-34 172 

x. 5ff 222 



PAGE 

x. 17-33 287 

x. 37 240 

x. 42 43 

xi. 2-6 156, 194 

xi. 10 208 

xi. 11 219 

xi. 12 301 

xi. 20-24 160 

xi. 25-30. . . 241 

xii. 1-8 57,238,247 

xii. 9-13 57, 165 

xii. 12 42 

xii. 15-16 44 

xii. 22-32 152,261,303 

xii. 31 303 

xii. 38-42 159 

xii. 43-45 261 

xiii. 3-9 281 

xiii. 24-30 281 

xiii. 36-43 202 

xiii. 47-50 282 

xiv. 13 41 

xiv. 13-21 58, 150 

xiv. 22-27 146 

xiv. 28-33 146 

xv. 1-20 248 



351 



352 Index to Passages in the Gospels. 



PAGE 
XV. 21-28 168 

xvi. 12 46 

xvi. 13-20. . . .220, 232, 236, 279 

xvii. 1-8 58 

xvii. 14-20 57, 171, 264 

xviii. 1-35 5iff. 

xviii. 12-13 201 

xviii. 19-20 264 

xix. 10-12 270 

xix. 16-26 269 

xix. 23-24 42 

xix. 28 22 1 

xx. 20-28 305,317 

xxi. 1-17 . ..... 59, 148, 227, 308 

xxi. 23-27 234, 309 

xxi. 33-46 204 

xxii. I-T4 204, 304 

xxii. 23-33 295 

xxii. 34-46 48 

xxii. 41-46 234 

xxiii. 1-12 250 

xxiii. 13 220, 250, 301 

xxiii. 33 208 

xxiii . 34-39 306 

xxiv. 36-xxv. 13 283 

xxv. 14-30 281 

xxv. 31-46 294 

xxvi. 6-13 314 

xxvi. 18 60 

xxvi. 21-24 3*5 

xxvi. 25 172 

xxvi. 26-29 3 J 6 

xxvi. 33-35 316 

xxvi. 36-46 60 

xxvi. 64 61, 235 

xxvi. 69-75 60 

xxvii. 3-10 172 

xxvii. 19 172 

xxvii. 24-25 172 



PAGE 

xxvii. 51 148 

xxvii. 51-53 146 

xxvii. 62-66 172 

xxviii. 1-5 147 

xxviii. 1-10. 332 

xxviii. 16-20 32, 239 

MARK. 

i. 1-8 50 

i. 14-15 210 

i H-39 62, 179 

i. 16-20 301 

ii. 1-12 56, 167 

ii. 14-17 300 

ii. 23-28 57 

iii. 1-6 57, 181 

iii. 7-19 62 

iii. 20-22 183 

iii. 22-30 152 

"i. 31-35 183 

iv. ] 0-20 202 

iv. 26-29 282 

v. 1-20 56 

v. 21-43 34, 57 

vi. 1-6 182 

vi. 13 155 

vi. 30-44 58, 150 

vii. 24-30 168 

vii. 31-37 178 

viii. 14-21 46, 182 

viii 22-26. . . 178 

viii. 32-33 279 

viii. 34-ix. 1 286 

ix. 2-8 58 

ix. 14-29 57. 177 

ix. 33-50 5 iff, 180 

x. 17-19 242 

x. 46-52 178 

xi. i-n 59 



Index to Passages in the Gospels. 353 



PAGE 

xi. 12-14, 20-25 149 

xi. 23-25 54, 264 

xiii 286, 290 

xiii. 35-37 3§ 

xiv. 13-14 60 

xiv. 32-42 60 

xiv. 62 61 

xiv. 66-72 60 

LUKE. 

i.-ii 32 

iv. 14-15 64 

iv. 16-30 147, 162 

iv. 31-43 47 

iv. 32 39 

v. i-ii 147 

v. 15-16 45 

v. 17 40 

v. 29 45 

vi. i-5 57 

vi. 6-n 57, 165 

vi. 12-20 64 

vi. 20-49 211 

vii. 1-10 173 

vii. 11-16 173 

vii. 18-23 156 

vii. 36-50 78 

viii. 40-56 34 

ix. 10-17 58, 150 

ix. 18 33 

ix. 28-36 58 

ix. 46-50 5 iff. 

ix. 61-62 270 

x. 1 173 

x. 17-20 164 

x. 25-37 205 

xi. 14-23 152 

xi. 14-36 199 

xi. 37-39 175 



PAGE 

xii. 1 280, 287 

xii. 32-48 283 

xii. 38 39 

xii. 41 39 

xii. 49-53 305 

xiii. 11-17 166 

xiii. 24-30 304 

xiii. 26 161 

xiii. 31-35 163 

xiv. 1-15 175 

xiv. 33 207 

xv. 3-7 201, 300 

xv. 11-32 205 

xvi. 14-31 205 

xvii. 1-10 . . . 52ff. 

xvii. 1 1-19 148 

xvii. 20-21 220 

xvii. 22-37 292 

xviii. 1-8 285 

xix. 1 1-27 204 

xix. 29-48 59 

xix. 33 40 

xx. 39-40 48 

xxii. 24-30 221, 312 

xxii. 35-36 312 

xxii. 39-46 60 

xxii. 51 146 

xxii. 54-62 60 

xxii. 63-65 313 

xxii. 69 61 

xxiii. 6-12 313 

xxiii. 36 40 

xxiii. 39-43 313 

xxiii. 45 40 

xxiv. 10 41 

xxiv. 50-53. 32 

JOHN, 
i- 15-34 79 



354 Index to Passages in the Gospels. 



.83 
•95 



1. 35-51 

ii. 1-11 

ii. 13-22 88 

iv. 1-45 105 

iv. 46-54 72 

v. 1 86 

v. 2-18 76 

vi. 1-24 88 



vn. 45-49- 
ix 



PAGE 
.. 9 I 
..97 



xi • 99 

xii. 1-8 77 

xix. 31-37 91 

xix. 35 130 

xx 93 

xxi 132, 134 
















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